Even over Zoom, with a shaky internet connection, Mikaela Shiffrin—the winningest alpine skier of all time, male or female—is effervescent.
She’s in Austria, I’m in New York, and we’re talking about her stellar season building up to the Milano Cortina Winter Games, where she will be competing in three events. Before the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, her career total wins had reached 108, with her most recent arriving just two weeks prior, in Špindlerův Mlýn, the Czech Republic. Her closest competitor? The retired Swede Ingemar Stenmark, with 86.
The Colorado native, now 30, participated in her first Games in 2014. Those were held in Sochi, Russia, and there, at just 18, she won gold in the slalom event. (She’d collect more hardware from Pyeongchang, in the giant slalom race, in 2018.) All of this is to say: At Milano Cortina, Shiffrin has nothing to prove statistically, only more to give back to a sport that has already given her so much. As she’ll say in our conversation: “I don’t know that I’ve ever been inspired to keep skiing based off of a race. I’m inspired by the work we put into it.”
Below, Shiffrin describes her headspace going into Milano Cortina, her rebound from a brutal puncture injury sustained in Vermont in 2024, and her dream podcast guest.
Vogue: Hey, Mikaela! Thanks for making the time to speak with us. We know you’re in peak training mode. Where are you right now?
Mikaela Shiffrin: My pleasure! I am in Austria, in a town called Reiteralm.
When did you get to Europe?
I’ve been here since the beginning of December and I’ll be here until March! I was also here from the end of September through mid-November, and then we had a short stint in the US for some races at Copper Mountain [Colorado]. Then we went to Canada and then we came back to Europe. But usually, our season is basically October until March, racing every weekend, and most of the races are in Europe.
Milano Cortina will be your fourth Olympic Games. Your first, at age 18, was 12 years ago. What would you say is different now for you mentally? And what feels the same?
That’s crazy, actually, to think that it’s been 12 years. I mean, I know it’s been that long, but you don’t hear it out loud very often! My first Olympics was a very eye-opening experience. There was so much that I just didn’t know. And you can’t be told it, you can’t learn about it from a book. You just have to go and compete and experience it. In Sochi, the US ski and snowboard team bid on a hotel ahead of time for all of us to stay in. So we had our own little cocoon, which was huge, because on day one, norovirus hit the athlete village and everybody got sick.
I feel like that happens often with the villages…
Really, every Olympics experience has been different. Beijing during the COVID era was something different entirely. With Milano Cortina, I guess it’s not so much about what to expect, but it’s more like… how to not set expectations. The one thing that I’ve learned, every single time, is that the Olympics are never going to be what you think they’re going to be.
