Mikaela Shiffrin’s late father, Jeff, had a unique way of capturing his daughter’s biggest moments.
From behind the lens of his camera, he told her story. It didn’t matter if it was childhood practices when she was learning to ski or Olympic competition when Mikaela was winning gold medals — Jeff was there every step of the way. He documented instances that seemingly no one else could. When other photographers put their cameras down, it was Jeff who kept his trained on its subject, always waiting for the perfect shot.
In 2020, Jeff's unexpected and tragic passing rocked the Shiffrin family to its core. For Mikaela, the loss was inconceivable. Her father had been one of her biggest supporters, the anchor of the family. At 24 years old, Mikaela was already a two-time Olympic gold medalist and dominating international competition. But while navigating the sudden grief alongside her mother, Eileen, and brother, Taylor, she considered walking away from skiing for good.
After taking a break from the World Cup tour, it was Taylor that eventually encouraged Mikaela to continue competing. The process, however, was anything but linear. Though she returned to the top of the podium just 10 months after Jeff’s passing, Mikaela found it difficult to navigate her new reality and the accompanying emotions without her father to help guide her.
It’s a feeling that the now 30-year-old has carried with her ever since. From her challenging 2022 Beijing Games, and the ups and downs of the years that followed, to the moment in the starting gate ahead of the women’s slalom event, Mikaela has simultaneously dreamed about — and feared — achieving success without her father.
“Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,” she said. “It’s like being born again, and I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in life without my dad.”
But with the weight of the world on her shoulders ahead of her final event at Milan Cortina, something shifted. Maybe, Mikaela realized, she didn’t need to navigate the course with her loss serving as an obstacle. Perhaps she could find a different way to channel her emotions, and a different way to connect with her dad.
“I think part of my journey through grief has been challenging because I don’t feel this thing that a lot of people talk about, this deep spiritual connection with their loved one,” Mikaela said. “People talk about feeling the presence, and I haven’t felt it in that way.”
She added: “I was like today, maybe, I just get to talk to him. And maybe he doesn’t have to specifically answer, which is hard. But it’s OK.”
With a dominating performance and the largest margin of victory in the event since 1998, Mikaela reframed the narrative — from thinking about who was missing from the stands, to keeping her father close the only way she knows how.
“Maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this reality, instead of thinking I would be going into this moment without him,” she said. “To take the moment to be silent with him, and with the whole team who is here with me now, and my mom, who is here with me now and has been with me since the beginning.
“It was just a little more spiritual than I usually am, and I’m really grateful for that.”
Mere seconds after crossing the finish line and discovering she was a gold medalist once again, Mikaela appeared overcome with emotion. After pumping her fist in celebration, she fell to the ground, pausing to take it in. When asked afterwards what was going through her mind, she shared, “I was trying to talk to my dad. I figured I might as well have a spiritual moment and just think about him.”
Jeff may not have been able to capture the moment from behind the lens of his camera on Wednesday. But perhaps, just like he always did, he had a more unique perspective of the win than anyone else in the stands.
