How Mikaela Shiffrin Was Rebuilt for Another Olympic Push*

Last November in Killington, Vermont, Mikaela Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen, watched anxiously as her daughter crashed during a giant slalom race. Mikaela slammed into a gate, lost control, and slid across the icy slope into a safety net near the trees.

“She wasn’t moving,” recalled Eileen, a former skier herself who’s coached Mikaela since she was a child. “It looked like it could have been a serious neck or back injury. I was trying to stay calm.”

At the time, Mikaela’s head coach, Karin Harjo, was filming her run from farther down the slope—both to analyze later and to capture what could have been Shiffrin’s historic 100th World Cup victory on home ground, where she grew up training.

But the run ended in disaster. The moment Shiffrin crashed, Harjo dropped the camera and raced uphill. Mikaela lay at the feet of a nearby Swiss coach, with a ski patroller already attending to her. A medic arrived just as Harjo reached the scene.