Mikaela Shiffrin just showed the whole world why she’s still considered one of the best skiers alive. The 30-year-old athlete won a gold medal in the women’s slalom on Wednesday morning, dominating the event with a 1.5-second lead over her competitors.
It was Shiffrin’s last event in the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, and her final chance to take home gold after a disappointing performance in the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
This is Shiffrin’s third gold medal as a U.S. Winter Olympian. That puts her in the same category as snowboarder Shaun White and bobsledder Kaillie Humphries. But it’s actually her fourth Olympic medal overall, tying her with Julia Mancuso for the most medals won by a U.S. woman in Alpine skiing.
In the below video of Shiffrin’s performance, she establishes the perfect rhythm that has long marked her as a champion skier. She took a 0.82-second lead in the second run — and then nearly doubled that upon reaching the finish line. Shiffrin finished with a final combined time of 1:39.10.
She immediately crouched down and put her head in her hands, seemingly overcome with emotion at her historic win.
A Classic Comeback Story
On one hand, Shiffrin’s win may not come as a surprise to many longtime fans. After all, this is the woman who became the first alpine skier to rack up 100 World Cup wins in 2025. No other skier — man or woman — has reached the triple-digit club in the FIS Downhill World Cup.
But whether it was that historic milestone — or this week’s gold medal — Shiffrin had to overcome a major injury in order to get there.
During her first attempt at reaching her 100th World Cup win, Mikaela Shiffrin crashed at the Stifel Killington Cup in Vermont and suffered serious, potentially season-ending injuries in 2024. It wasn’t easy to recover from the injury, or get over the fear that it created when she finally returned to skiing, she told GearJunkie in December 2024.
But clearly, not even a devastating crash could prevent Shiffrin from cementing her status as one of the greatest to ever strap on a pair of skis.
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