Four years after making headlines at the Olympics for all of the wrong reasons, Team USA’s Mikaela Shiffrin is golden once again.
Shiffrin, 30, took home the gold in the women’s slalom at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Wednesday, February 18, earning her first medal in eight years.
The American skier seemed briefly in shock after completing her run, appearing to stare at the leaderboard to make sure she was seeing things correctly.
Shiffrin then shared the milestone with Switzerland’s Camille Rast and Sweden’s Anna Swenn-Larsson, who won silver and bronze, respectively.
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As Shiffrin made her way off the course, the weight of the moment hit her and she broke down in celebratory tears while being embraced by members of her team.
The emotion was hard-earned for Shiffrin, who achieved glory after a disastrous 2022 Olympics in Beijing, which saw her fail to make the podium with multiple DNF (Did Not Finish) results.
Shiffrin is now a three-time Olympic gold medalist after winning the giant slalom in 2018 in Pyeongchang and the slalom in 2014 in Sochi.
Before this year’s Olympics, Shiffrin exclusively told Us Weekly about the mental work she had put in to prepare for her events.
“The hurdle I’ve been working on with my team and with my psychologist and with my family and everybody around me is: We could go to these Games and we could do everything right … and it could still go wrong,” she said.
Reflecting on her failure in Beijing, Shiffrin admitted she still wore the scars.
“A lot of people who were tuning into Mikaela Shiffrin for her biggest race were tuning in when I didn’t win a medal,” she said. “They were saying, ‘Don’t even come home. You failed us. You didn’t bring home any gold.’”
Shiffrin also credited her fiancé, Norwegian skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, with being a buoy throughout all of the ups and downs.
“He just found a way to be truthful and kind and made me feel a kind of safety that only people within my family can possibly provide,” Shiffrin told Us. “That was incredible. Flash forward several years and his support has meant the world. It’s been life-saving in some ways. He’s helped me grow and mature and learn about myself, to find ways to communicate. It’s been a pretty incredible experience.”
The couple began exchanging messages via social media less than a year after Mikaela’s father, Jeff Shiffrin, died in February 2020 after an accident at the family’s home in Colorado.
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“At the time, I could not imagine. I was like, ‘I’m not doing this. I’m not going through love because I cannot go through losing people,’’’ Shiffrin said. “Maybe it sounds dramatic, but it’s one of those things where you’re just totally closed off to it.”
The couple got engaged in April 2024, but Shiffrin admitted wedding planning was going to have to wait until after the 2026 Olympics.
“We’ve talked about it here and there,” Shiffrin said to Us. “We’re just like, ‘Do you want a big one or a small one?’ It would be so fun to have a really, really big one and just invite everybody who’s ever been impactful in our lives. But also that seems like a lot. What if we just do a really, really small one?”
She added, “Unfortunately we’re so much of the same mindset that I don’t know if it’s going to be easy to make any decisions.”
