Facts from her new documentary as Mikkaela Shiffrin resumes racing this weekend.
Get up close and personal as Mikaela Shiffrin bares her soul in a fly-on-the-wall Red Bull TV documentary leading into the 2017/18 World Cup season. From her summer training regime to the hardships of the World Cup circuit, the 22-year-old bares all…
– Shiffrin will race for the first time this weekend since Korea, in which she won a gold and a silver in the giant slalom and combined respectively, adding to her previous slalom gold from Russia in 2014. That first gold made her the youngest ever Olympic champion in that event.
– She has a dominant lead in the defense of her World Cup overall globe, with 1,513 points to closest challenge Wendy Holdener’s 952 and with just two race weekends on the World Cup circuit remaining: the aforementioned Ofterschwang this weekend and then Are.
– Shiffrin is bidding to become only the seventh woman in history to win a World Cup event at all the disciplines. This season, she has added a downhill win to that list but still needs a Super-G success to complete the set.
– In the film, she lays bare the difficulties of being at the top of her game and one of the most sought-after athletes. She says of the attention, “Sometimes I wish I could just sleep through the day”. Of the bad days on the mountain, she adds, “Sometimes it doesn’t go perfect. Most of the times it doesn’t go perfect and I don’t deal with those moments very well. At the time, it feels like the end of the world”.
– Since winning gold in Sochi and in the intervening years, one of the biggest things to handle are the pre-race fears and nerves. Of that, she reveals: “I have fear. I have an incredible amount of fear every time I step in my skis. With one wrong move I could blow out my knee, or I could get a concussion or worse. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in skiing and I’m very aware of that risk 100% for that time. The only thing that makes me feel good is if I feel prepared.”