This interview is based on a conversation with alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The first big move was from Colorado to the East Coast when I was 7. I was devastated. I left all my friends. I left snowy, sunny Colorado, and we moved to New Hampshire. I had never experienced rain in the wintertime. I think I was pretty depressed for quite some time, definitely through that first winter.
But I found purpose and joy and sort of found my soul again in ski racing. I found friendship in the sport. And I think that was the first time where I was really tested in the sense of understanding what’s inspiring or what brings you passion — and maybe that’s not a place, but it’s more like the people you’re surrounded with, family, and the things that you do that give you purpose.
In a way, I feel like moving gave me the opportunity to explore deep-seated passions more fully than I would have experienced if I’d stayed in Colorado.
We moved again — from New Hampshire back to Colorado — and that one was particularly challenging. It came at a pretty crucial point where I was going to either continue ski racing or not.
In the end, that passion for the sport kept driving me.
My mom is my best friend, coach, and teacher
My mom has consistently been my best friend since I can remember.
When we started going down the ski academy route, I wasn’t old enough yet, so I started a homeschooling program, and my mom ran it with me. She had been a nurse until my brother and I were born, then she took a hiatus for about 14 or 15 years. In that period, she completely shaped the course of my career through coaching and her ability to translate movement patterns into verbal communication.
I feel like she’s the most talented coach I’ve ever worked with — in skiing, but also in tennis, windsurfing, anything I’ve ever done. She’s always been the one who can explain it best to me. But it comes with challenges, too. Balancing best friend, mother, teacher, and coach, especially as I was coming onto the World Cup and still discovering who I was.
We’ve had some challenging conversations. But in the end, she’s also the first person I want to tell anything to. I call her all the time.
The last six years have been a low point for our family, after my dad died. She’s really shown me what it is to be strong — not to feel strong, but to actually be strong. I think that’s a really different thing. People in this world think that in order to show strength, you have to feel it. And it’s not always the case. It’s in your weakest moments that you show the most resilience and strength.
Weekends are not my off time
When I first got into the World Cup, I was also trying to complete high school in my off time. I was studying chemistry while on the road. During the summertime, my mom would actually sit down and study with me — learn biology with me. She basically went through high school again so that I could graduate.
People always ask what I do to unwind, and they assume I unwind on the weekends. But that’s when we really go to work. We train during the week so we can race on the weekends — that’s when everybody else is usually doing their unwinding. So we don’t really have a period where you can truly check out or relax.
It’s more like, if you can grab 30 minutes in a day to watch part of a TV show, that’s pretty great. But you do it every single day, and you try to make sure you have a little bit of connection and a little bit of relaxation. The weekends are pretty special in a different way, but I wouldn’t call them relaxing.
After my accident, I couldn’t care less if I ever raced again
After my accident, the reason I first got back on my skis was more about the encouragement from the people around me. From my mom, from some of our close friends, some of my really trusted advisors over the years. And honestly, from long-standing partners like Barilla — brands, companies, and people who have really invested in me and also shown incredible kindness and support and a sense of family through really, really challenging times.
It was a culmination of all of these really important voices in my life saying, “Just try. You loved this so much before, and this is just a really challenging period — maybe you’ll find that skiing can be something that helps you heal.” My mom said, “Maybe you’ll find that you can connect with Dad better in the mountains.”
For the first year to two years, I had extreme fatigue. A lot of brain fog. A lot of signs of PTSD that I didn’t really know what that was at the time.
It’s like putting one foot in front of the other when you don’t have any reason to — not something tangible, not something you can feel. Just doing it because you know that there is probably going to be another side to this, and it’s likely going to be brighter than what you’re experiencing in that hard time. It’s almost like a blind belief that nothing lasts forever. I didn’t actually start doing any psychology until after Beijing, which was the second anniversary of my dad’s passing. That summer, I got into grief counseling.
When I’m asked what I would want my teen self to know about where I am now, I don’t think I would want to know. I wouldn’t want to know at that time that I was going to achieve this level, but without one of the most important people in my life. I don’t think I could say anything.
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