Carrying the weight of the world’s expectations on her shoulders, Mikaela Shiffrin won gold in the women’s slalom on Wednesday in Cortina. The Olympic champion posted a combined time of 1:39.10.

It was the 30-year-old’s first Olympic medal since 2018 and the fourth of her career. She now stands alone as the only American in Alpine skiing history to hold three Olympic gold medals, breaking a record she previously held with Ted Ligety and Andrea Mead Lawrence.

"This is a feels like a really big moment," an emotional Shiffrin told NBC's Cara Banks after the race. "Honestly, the skiing is what I cared about. Of course a medal and gold, that's a dream come true. But at some point this week, I just said, like, stop dreaming. Just ski.

"This whole time, [I've been] waiting for two times, 45 seconds today to be able to ski. And I'm so happy to be able to do the right thing in the right moment."

Her margin of victory, 1.50 seconds, is the largest in any Olympic Alpine skiing event since 1998.

Camille Rast of Switzerland snagged silver (+1.50), the first medal of her blossoming career.

Sweden's Anna Swenn Larsson secured bronze (+1.71).

The path to gold for Shiffrin began the moment her 2022 Beijing Olympics concluded. She was a strong favorite to come away with a medal in multiple events, including the slalom, but shockingly did not finish (DNF’d) the race. She also DNF’d the giant slalom and the now defunct Alpine combined.

At the time, Shiffrin told NBC Sports “I feel like a joke.” To this day, she’s said she’s still trying to understand what exactly went wrong in the string of disappointing performances.

Still, she bounced back and continued to dominate the World Cup circuit (the highest level of Alpine skiing competition), winning the slalom, giant slalom and overall Crystal Globes — which recognizes the best Alpine skier in a season — in 2023.

Shiffrin missed a bulk of the 2024-25 campaign due to a scary puncture wound injury she sustained from a crash in Killington, Vermont, which also resulted in post traumatic stress disorder. She managed to return a couple of months later to scoop up her 100th World Cup victory, a milestone that no other Alpine skier in the sport’s history has reached.

The Edwards, Colorado native went gangbusters (even for her standards) out of the 2025-26 season starting gate and hasn't looked back since. In eight slalom races, she won seven of them. The race she didn't win? She was the runner-up just behind Olympic silver medalist Rast. 

Despite her unparalleled output, critics remained laser-focused on her Olympic struggles. They questioned if she could "win the big one" again, and Shiffrin herself revealed the mental toll the pressure took on her. She revealed she had "nightmares" thinking about racing in Cortina during the Games. 

On Wednesday, Shiffrin put those nightmares to bed.

"This is a moment I've been pretty scared of for a long time," she said. "Every new experience in life is an experience that [my dad] is not here to see, not in person, at least."

Jeff Shiffrin, Mikaela's father, died unexpectedly after suffering a severe head injury in early 2020.

His daughter is an Olympic champion once again. And really, she left no doubt from the moment she left the starting gate.

Shiffrin leapt out to a prodigious 0.82-second advantage (47.13) after Run 1, the largest margin in an Olympic women's slalom since 1960. Still, the run wasn't without it's fair share of drama.

Midway through her traverse of the Tofane, it appeared that Shiffrin missed a gate, shades of Beijing. She froze, seemingly confused about which direction to carve next. Still, she remained on her line and in an instant, regained momentum.

That section wound up proving tricky for many of the competitors, and you could see Shiffrin, while in the leader's chair, explain her bewilderment. 

"What did I just do?" she mouthed to her camp, an air of relief palpable. "What was that?"

Turns out, that was the defining moment of her gold medal-worthy Run 1.