Renck: For courageous Mikaela Shiffrin, overcoming mental burden is worth wait in gold

Only GOATs chase ghosts. Only the best are defined by legacies, not victories.

Mikaela Shiffrin was choking.

That is what people were saying. That is what they were thinking.

When you are to skiing what Serena Williams is to tennis, there is no grace, no free passes.

As Americans, we only watch the winter sports at the Olympics. It makes performances the equivalent of a college final exam, disproportionately weighted.

It is not fair. But it is who we are.

On the biggest stage — Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals — championships provide exclamation points in barstool arguments.

On Wednesday in Cortina, Italy, Shiffrin shut up her critics.

The silence was as golden as her medal.

But it wasn’t about the haters. This was about her.

She gets the credit.

She did this. Not us.

She blazed to gold in the slalom with a combined time of 1 minute, 39.10 seconds — 1.5 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Camille Rast.

In her final race of the 2026 Olympic Games, she vanquished demons that have followed her since Beijing.

“I wanted to be free, I wanted to unleash,” Shiffrin told reporters. “In the end, today, showing up, that was the thing I wanted most. More than the medal. Now, to also get to have a medal is unbelievable.”

Shiffrin eliminated the confusion, poofed the black cloud hanging over her.

She won gold in slalom in Sochi in 2014 and in giant slalom in Pyeongchang 2018. No one, man or woman, has more World Cup victories or podiums. She is not the product of marketing. She is a legend.

And suddenly, somehow, the Olympics became her soft spot, the site of crippling vulnerability.

Four years ago, she crashed out of both the giant slalom and slalom seconds into her runs. She ambitiously entered six events and medaled in zero of them. She would later say she was “embarrassed” by her performance.

Shiffrin had become a victim of her own trophy case. Imagine Tiger Woods, in his prime, missing the cut at The Masters annually.

When Shiffrin finished 15th in the slalom in the team combined event last week in Cortina after Breezy Johnson took first in the downhill, it created concern. Only a wreck or oddly conservative run could take them off the medal stand and Shiffrin skied tentatively, leaving the Americans fourth.

Then, she finished 11th in the giant slalom. That ran her streak to eight straight events without a medal.

It officially reignited the debate. Had the Olympics become a hurdle she could no longer clear?

It did not make sense because of her past success on and off the slopes.

Shiffrin had overcome the sudden loss of her father in 2020 and PTSD from a freak injury to her abdomen in an accident in 2024.

How could Shiffrin be the greatest and succumb to the Olympic glare?

The too-simple explanation is pressure.

It overwhelmed Simone Biles, the best gymnast of all time, in Tokyo, forcing her to withdraw because of the twisties, a spatial disorientation that affected her balance. Earlier this week, it swallowed up men’s figure skater Ilia Malinin, the Quad God, who breaks physics with his jumps but was broken by the magnitude of the moment.

Malinin has demonstrated class and resilience in talking about his disappointment, believing he has an Olympic path forward in the sport he loves. Biles restored her roar in Paris last summer, winning four medals, three of them gold, while becoming a Shiffrin ally.

Here in Colorado, Shiffrin’s pursuit of redemption was personal. She spent part of her childhood in our mountains. She trained in Vail. We wanted her to crush it for our country, of course, but really for our state, for all of us.

But she had to do this for herself.

She had to be present for this present to hang around her neck.

“Through a lot of discussions with my psychologist and my mom and my team, everything we said was that, despite pressure or nerves, I want to feel this skiing,” Shiffrin said Wednesday.

She arrived in Cortina with seven slalom wins in the first eight events on the World Cup Circuit this season. She was dominant. So when Shiffrin did not shine in Italy, it made her an easy target.

This is where nuance matters.

Skiing is unique because every mountain is different and the weather remains a variable. And as easy as it is to lump her in with Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, she is not representing a city, a state or region. She is carrying the weight of an entire country.

There is no teammate to ski the last few gates. No coach to rescue her with the perfect play call. She does not get multiple passes or 30 shots. She has a few runs, where being off line by 3 inches can lead to four years of anguish.

Shiffrin did not cower in the face of disappointment. She accepted her underwhelming performances in Cortina as a challenge, not a conclusion.

This could not have been easy. She acknowledged in an interview with Biles recently that she had nightmares before these Olympics, worried that things would not work out as planned.

We have come a long way as a sports viewing public from the days of rubbing dirt on it. But Shiffrin provided a reminder that mental issues are real and must be addressed like a physical injury.

She patiently, if not painfully, worked through her public failure in private. With one last chance to seize glory, she became comfortable again, making us all proud.

But this is all about Shiffrin.

She found the courage to remove the burden she was carrying.

And it was worth the wait in gold.

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