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 the Czech Republic. Her closest rival? 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.
You are widely considered the greatest alpine skier of all time, with the numbers to support it. What do you think of the term GOAT?
I do sometimes think, like, Okay, on paper, [Mikaela Shiffrin is the] most winning World Cup ski racer of all time. Yes, check, got it. But otherwise, I think the most beautiful thing about sports is how they’re kind of meant to be opinion-based. I feel like, for fans and viewers, sports are meant to be about people sitting around the dinner table discussing why someone is or isn’t “the greatest.” In skiing, I think Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller, and Marcel Hirscher should be in the discussion, too. So I guess, long story short, I’m not a personal fan of the GOAT term, except that I love that it brings conversation to the sport—to any sport. And that’s what we want as athletes.
That’s a smart take. Yes, statistics exist, but sports are about so much more than data and results.
Also, just a point, for technicality’s sake: In ski racing, you’ve got downhill, Super-G, giant slalom, and slalom, and then team combined is a mix of downhill and slalom. But the four king events, they’re almost like different sports. I mean, the slalom skis versus downhill skis are entirely different. They require completely different training strategies. They basically require different mountains, because certain mountains are better equipped for long runs with jumps versus some that are shorter and steeper, which work better for GS and slalom.
Since your injury in Killington in late 2024, you’ve had a super strong recovery. What would you say has been the biggest blessing in disguise from that accident? And has there been anything that’s remained… let’s say, a point of caution in your head since then?
I think there’s a lot of caution built into my mentality, and it has been that way from the start. It’s something that I’ve reckoned with my entire career, this sort of risk management and how much risk I’m willing to take on any given training or race day. My ideal is going into a turn with no hesitation at all, but that’s almost impossible to achieve 100% of the time, for anyone. So then it’s about who’s hesitating the least. And I’ve always erred on the side of self-preservation, in a way.
With Killington, the thing that remains with me is the pain. I was impaled; it was like being stabbed. And the thing is, I didn’t even really do anything that wrong. I just happened to slide through a gate. That error happens hundreds of times in a season. You typically get up and walk away from it. So I went down and I was like, Shoot, my race is over. That stinks. And then I hit the gate and I was like, Oh my God, I’ve never felt this kind of pain before. It’s mind-numbing. It hurts so bad I just want to be asleep. I guess the caution that I take with me from that, and that I’m continuing to battle, is that I don’t want to go too far beyond my comfort zone. And I’m reminding myself that those runs normally don’t end in that kind of pain.
And you’ve had a great season so far!
It’s working!
What would you say is something besides winning that’s reminded you of why you do this, and why you love it?
You know what? I really appreciate this question. Victories are wonderful. Nobody’s going to say that they don’t like to win, right? But the thing that keeps me coming back is this sort of idyllic picture in my head of a really great training day. It doesn’t have to be a perfect day, or perfect weather, or anything like that. It can be snowing, raining, sunshine for sure, but it’s just a day during which I’m able to get really focused, get in laps on a training course, and work well with my team. We do video analysis on the mountain while I’m training, even. So they’ll video my run and then download it onto an iPad, and we’ll watch it right then and there in real time. Or, we’ll spend hours shoveling snow off a course. These parts are just so… tangible, especially in a sport that’s riddled with variables that are really not in our control. So those are the days that make me want to come back again and again and again. Honestly, now that I think about it, the motivation or inspiration around the sport for me usually doesn’t come from racing. I don’t know that I’ve ever been inspired to keep skiing based off of a race [and its results]. I’m inspired by the work we put into it.
Your podcast is called What’s the Point?. Tell us a bit about how that is going.
Yes. It has been really fun, so far. We kicked things off in October and I’m just trying to build up a little bit of a catalog. I’m actually going to be having a conversation with my mom in the next couple of weeks. She’s pretty shy with cameras and with interviews, but, she’s my longest-standing coach. She taught me how to ski when I was three, four, five years old, and she’s still one of my coaches now. I also just had a really cool conversation with Bode Miller.
Oh, he’s great.
He was my greatest childhood idol… I’m so excited for people to listen to this one. I’m just trying to get different perspectives from different people, athletes for sure. It’s easy to start in the ski racing world, because those athletes would be the most likely to do it, and then just branch out from there. I dream about having Stephen Colbert on the show.
Interesting!
But I think that would be, like, years down the line. I don’t know how I could even prep for a conversation like that.
The Golden Globes introduced a best podcast category for the first time…
Oh, wow.
Amy Poehler won. Have you watched Good Hang, or seen clips of it?
I have not yet, and I have to. I’ve heard so many good things… You know what’s interesting, though… across my whole life, I usually just shy away from starting conversations. I just kind of prefer to be alone. I’m generally pretty self-conscious or scared of what people are going to think. My career has helped me come out of that shell a little bit, because I’ve done quite a few interviews now, so in that sense I’ve gotten more comfortable. But that’s all talking about myself. Doing this podcast, it has been so cool to learn how to relate to others and gain perspective from others.
This conversation is making me think a bit more about Bode Miller. When he finished competitive skiing, he went on to commentate, and he’s excellent at it. Though I know that’s not the same thing as hosting a conversation, exactly…
The way his mind works is so interesting. And he has an incredible delivery of… I don’t know, of words. Yet he has also said that language, in general, is inadequate to actually describe what we feel [when skiing]. And that ski racing was his greatest form of self-expression, because words are just not enough.
That’s amazing.
I think that sentiment really tugs at your heartstrings in a different way—and I agree with him. It’s a very cool way to think about skiing.
This conversation has been edited and condensed. Tune in for Shiffrin’s first event at Milano Cortina—the Women’s Team combined Slalom—on February 10 at 8 a.m. EST.