After A Solid Offseason Prep, Mikaela Shiffrin Aims To Race “A Bit More” This Season

Mikaela Shiffrin competes during the women's downhill at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Feb. 15, 2022 in Yanqing, China.

Mikaela Shiffrin is just back from a three-week training camp in Chile, where she spent 21 days on snow, with no days missed due to bad weather. 
The productive training camp was, in a way, a metaphor for Shiffrin’s off-season — and hopefully the upcoming season, too. Her ski prep this year was consistent, and life has been sprinkled with fun — like a trip to England for a behind-the-scenes look at Formula 1 and a weekend staying in a castle with boyfriend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, and then last weekend, an on-the-field experience at a Denver Broncos football game where quarterback Russell Wilson and his wife Ciara said hi.
“I still can’t even wrap my head around the fact that Russell and Ciara recognize me!” gushed Shiffrin, still — after three Olympic Games and so many alpine skiing records broken — surprised by her own celebrity.
It was a bit of normalcy after three years of stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 Olympic season, and the tragic death of her father in February 2020. 
“This spring, summer, and fall prep period, I feel like fewer things are spiraling out of control than have in the previous years, which makes me feel just a little bit more settled in myself as a human,” said Shiffrin by phone from her home in Colorado. 
That’s not to say Shiffrin has picked up all the pieces of her life shattered by her father’s death. The pieces are all there. But life feels more multifaceted now, she said, “like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope.” 
Her father was instrumental in keeping Team Shiffrin on the road — handling logistics and snafus. He also managed life at home while his daughter and wife, Eileen, were at races and training camps abroad. Shiffrin and her mom now handle the myriad logistics both at home and on the road.
“I thrive when I feel organized in life,” Shiffrin explained. “It could be organization in my closet or organization in my travel plans and having my ducks in a row before I leave home.”
And if the ducks go quacking off in the wrong direction? Shiffrin can feel shaken. That may never change. But at least for now, many of the ducks are paddling in the same direction.

This bodes well for Shiffrin’s upcoming season — her twelfth on the FIS World Cup tour. She leaves for Europe next week for the start of the 2022/2023 FIS World Cup — the usual giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, on Oct. 22. 
It’s a race that Shiffrin, now 27, has won twice and finished on the podium four other times. She won it most recently last year — one of five world cup races that she won during the 2021/2022 season. Her current tally is 74 world cup wins, a dozen shy of Ingemar Stenmark’s record of most world cup wins (86) and eight back from Lindsey Vonn’s women’s record (82). 
Although the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 were a disappointment, Shiffrin ended last season on a good note: by carrying home her fourth big crystal globe, the trophy given for the overall world cup title.
It is too early to talk more crystal globes, or even world championship titles. The 2023 world alpine championships will be held in Courchevel/Meribel, France, in February, and Shiffrin could add to her six world championship titles and 11 total medals (more than any other U.S. alpine skier). Of note, she won the final downhill of last season on the 2023 world championship course and finished second in super-G.
In Soelden, Shiffrin will again be a favorite. Her final day in Chile, she trained GS and was excited. She is a skier whose speed comes in part from what might be called her spidey sense on skis.
“I had some really, really good feelings,” she said. “The fluidity of my turn and connection from turn to turn was really on point. It’s always good to end a camp feeling that.”
Shiffrin is confident she will hold onto those feelings for Soelden.
“It’s hard to know how exactly I’m going to feel until we actually show up for the race and see what things pop up in my mind, and I’m sure I’ll be nervous,” she said, “but I’m excited for the race.”

In Chile, Shiffrin trained slalom, GS, and super-G. Chile’s spring snow conditions prevented her from training downhill, but this will not affect her winter plans.
“It’s safe to say that I will do some downhill,” she stated. “I’m going to try to target a few more super-G races and see where downhill fits in.”
World cup downhill races involve several days of training runs leading up to each race. This time commitment can impact Shiffrin’s slalom and GS training. And she relies on training to keep her spidey sense honed.
Her world cup schedule will focus on her usual fortes, slalom and GS, and will “increase a little bit” with more super-Gs.
Last season, Shiffrin competed in seven of eight world cup super-Gs and finished on the podium in four of them.
Not on her schedule: the new cross-border Zermatt-Cervino downhill in late October. 
“As I get closer to the end of my career,” she said, “I am just trying to be smart about what races I do.”