When Mikaela Shiffrin’s 100th victory arrived Sunday, it looked like so many others that Shiffrin has collected over the past dozen years.
Her head goes back, her poles go out wide and up in the air, and underneath the goggles, there’s this infectious look of joy and surprise, even after all these years and all these wins.
But this one wasn’t like any of the others. It came nearly three months after she suffered a puncture wound in her abdomen during a violent crash in Vermont, and less than two weeks after she pulled out of a race because, strange as this may sound, the greatest skier in history was scared to go fast.
The delayed coronation though, didn’t make it any less sweet, maybe even more so. Shiffrin finally collected her record 100th World Cup win in Sestriere, Italy, about 4,000 miles from the ski school where, some 20 years ago, she began to morph from a gifted child into an all-time great. No Alpine skier has won more races than Shiffrin, allowing her to stake her claim as the best in the sport’s history.
But on the long road to her 100th win, Shiffrin may have accomplished something even more groundbreaking — in her sport and plenty of others. Over the last year and a half, Shiffrin, at the very top of the game, has built a support team dominated by women. This could have an even bigger impact on her sport than another trip down the ski hill that ends on the top step of the podium.
Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen, a former competitive skier, has long been among her top coaching voices, a kind of chairman of Team Shiffrin to her daughter’s role as the chief executive. In 2023, Shiffrin named Karin Harjo, a veteran coach at every level in both the U.S. and Canada, as her head coach, replacing Mike Day, who had worked with her for seven years.
Regan Dewhirst has worked as her physical therapist since 2018. In that role, Dewhirst is responsible for making sure Shiffrin’s chiseled 5-foot-7 inch, 140-pound frame is optimized for competitions and recovers from injuries like the one Shiffrin suffered in Vermont.
There is a guy around. Janne Haarala of Finland became Harjo’s assistant coach earlier this year. But there is no doubt that Shiffrin has been very intentional about populating her inner circle with women in a way that most top athletes, male or female, have rarely done, and it’s hard to argue with results that scream continued dominance.
To be sure, Shiffrin was great before Harjo, setting the record for Alpine World Cup wins two days before announcing Harjo’s hiring. Would she have continued to be as great as she has been the past two years without her, including another season championship in slalom in 2024 despite missing six weeks with sprained knee ligaments sustained during a downhill crash?
Maybe. Maybe not.
“It’s important to have everything,” Shiffrin said during a preseason news conference and reiterated in a subsequent interview with The Athletic. “Female, male, intense, passionate, positive, sometimes even negative.”
Mikaela Shiffrin cheers a November win in Austria with Karin Harjo (to her left), Eileen Shiffrin (second from left), Janne Haarala (third) and Regan Dewhirst (fourth). (Millo Moravski / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)
Eileen Shiffrin said in a series of text messages that female coaches can bring a different sensibility to sports, but she has seen female coaches be too tough on their athletes as they try to prove themselves in a predominantly male-centric world.
“In doing that, they can lose that sensibility,” Eileen Shiffrin wrote. “But I do think that female athletes, or a lot of female athletes relate well to, or better to, strong female coaches.”
And yet, Harjo is one of just a half-dozen women coaching in the top circuit of Alpine skiing. Other individual sports, such as tennis and golf, don’t have too many more.
Shiffrin and others have said the reasons are fairly obvious. Committing to coaching, especially in a global sport, means heading out on the road at a time of life when they are likely to be having children and helping to raise families. Many of the best candidates — recently retired female athletes — end their careers to do just that.
Given that, when Harjo, who had led Canada’s ski team the previous year, expressed an interest in coaching Shiffrin, the skier jumped at the chance to hire her. She felt an immediate shift in her team dynamic, including a heightened comfort level in advocating for herself, sometimes with just a few relatable words, rather than having her mother do it for her.
This generally arises about once a month, with her menstrual cycle. For years, Shiffrin didn’t feel all that comfortable announcing to the older men who surrounded her that she was on her period. Her mother would have to vouch for her.
When Shiffrin tried to talk around the issue, saying that she had a headache and was feeling crampy, as modern and aware as those men might try to be, sometimes the response could become something along the lines of, “I’m so sorry, but let’s put some intensity into your skiing,” Shiffrin said.
With Harjo and Dewhirst, a headache and cramps convey an actual boundary, and the need for an adjustment.
Dewhirst knows immediately that Shiffrin’s back is stiffer, that her joints will be achier than usual. If it’s a skiing day, they will have to lower the volume of work on the mountain. She’ll have to do additional hip mobility exercises before she does strength work. They are going to think hard about doing any heavy strength work.
“Any time a human being walks the same path as another, you connect,” Harjo said in a video interview from a ski lodge in the Austrian Alps in mid-November, referencing the obvious biological commonality. “But beyond that, I would say it’s very much about who we are as people, who Mikaela is. Her personal philosophy matching mine, and from that standpoint it does lend to more open conversations just because you can relate.”
Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates with the crystal globe trophy as last year’s overall World Cup slalom winner. She came back from a midseason knee injury to finish the job. (Franz Kirchmayr / SEPA.Media / Getty Images)
Harjo is confident she could relate in some of the same ways with a male skier. But as she describes her approach to coaching, it’s hard not to see them running in the opposite direction from what has come to be described as “mansplaining.”
Not all male coaches are mansplainers. And plenty of female coaches can lean dictatorial. It’s just that Harjo and Dewhirst do not. They ask questions. A lot of them. about the heart of whatever matter they are talking about.
Is there a better way to do what we are trying to accomplish?
Do you think we have thought through all the different angles?
Is this really going to achieve the desired outcome?
They don’t necessarily know the answers. They just have some ideas. And when decision time comes, they want Shiffrin to own the decision.
Having worked with Shiffrin for more than six years — and having grown up skiing with her for a time, and training with Eileen Shiffrin — Dewhirst knows if she is going to recommend a certain exercise or nutritional shift, she should come with three or four scientific articles for support.
Perhaps the most poignant examples occurred the past two seasons, when Shiffrin was trying to come back from the injury to her knee, the stab wound to her abdomen, and the psychological effects of the November crash in Killington, Vt. Shiffrin always wants to return, but it wasn’t completely clear that would be the smartest move. She might be better off calling it a season rather than risking another, more serious injury that could jeopardize the next one.
Last year, Dewhirst and Harjo asked Shiffrin what she felt she needed for the comeback to be successful. Shiffrin said she wanted to win another season slalom title. They asked her why. What was her motivation? That led to a larger discussion of why she skis. It almost always does.
Shiffrin generally falls back on her desire to drive her sport to new heights and inspire the next generation.
OK. But why?
“You kind of get to a much deeper kind of meaning within the group as well,” Dewhirst said.
Mikaela Shiffrin (wearing No. 4 at top) celebrates her win Sunday in Italy with members of the U.S. team. She’s the only Alpine skier to reach 100 career World Cup wins. (Stefano Guidi / Getty Images)
Eileen Shiffrin has watched and participated in all this with that sense of wonder she has experienced as the mother and coach of the world’s greatest skier. Her daughter’s coaches, the men and the women, have all served as role models for her in different ways.
At Burke Mountain Academy, the school where Mikaela trained, Eileen saw how headmaster Kirk Dwyer always figured out how to frame his communication positively. Day was a master of organization, tending to every detail as Shiffrin juggled the technical and speed schedules on the World Cup circuit, trying to relieve stress at every step.
She also said some of her fondest sports memories are playing high school field hockey for “Ms. Zephyr” at Mount Greylock in Williamstown, Mass.
“The female coaches I have seen or worked with are incredibly tough and hard workers with a ton of grit but also a gentler side which athletes, whether male or female, can benefit from,” Eileen Shiffrin said.
She has come to gauge her daughter’s state of mind by how much she sees her laughing with her team.
“There has been a lot of that lately,” she said before the season in November. “That’s always a great sign that we are in a good place.”
There was less of it in December and January as she tried to get back on snow with a hole in her abdomen and vacuum apparatus draining fluid. At the time, just going for a walk outside her Colorado home was a triumph.
From the looks of it, she’s laughing plenty once more. As well she should. With 100 World Cup wins, she’s in a place no one else has ever been.
GO DEEPER
With World Cup in her backyard, Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Kilde focus on recovery
(Top illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Alexis Boichard / Agence Zoom / Getty Images; Alain Grosclaude / Agence Zoom / Getty Images; Fabrice Coffrini / AFP)
