Mikaela Shiffrin came to the Olympics looking for peace in her skiing. She found gold along the way

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin is well-versed in the bargain the Olympics forces athletes to make. The risk that comes with laying yourself bare on the world stage. The way it challenges your mental and physical health. The ever-present fear of failure and the way it can frame — fairly or unfairly — the public's perception of you. "It's not the easiest thing in the world to do," she said. No, it's not. Trying to nudge that bargain toward friendlier terms is next to impossible. The greatest ski racer in the history of the sport has spent years wrangling with it. On Wednesday, Shiffrin may have finally found peace. Standing on the medal stand, a second gold medal in slalom around her neck a dozen years after she earned her first, Shiffrin closed her eyes, mouthed the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner" and breathed in a moment built on tireless practice, innate talent, purity of purpose and a self-belief that is harder to come by than you might think. The peace she felt didn't come from shedding the weight of getting "ripped apart by people who sit on the couch," as teammate Paula Moltzan put it. No, Shiffrin returned to the top of the Olympic medal stand for the first time in eight years by leaning into what drew her to bunny slopes in New England as a kid in the first place: the challenge of bending gravity and her body to her will as she navigates from here to there while darting between gates as fast as she can. She did not come to the Dolomite Mountains to win, which is merely a byproduct. If she's being honest, her relationship with racing is "complicated." The joy isn't in the result, it's in the pursuit of her best. Shiffrin found it on a sun-splashed winter afternoon when the stakes were uncomfortably high. Down to her last chance to leave Italy with a medal after missing out in the team combined and giant slalom, she did not have to be reminded of what might happen if things got sideways. To be Shiffrin at this moment is to be considered within the sport as one of the unquestioned GOATs in women's skiing — a record 108 World Cup wins and counting can't be wrong — while also being viewed by the public that tunes in only to the Olympics as a disappointment after she failed to reach the podium in any of the six races she entered in Beijing four years ago. She has long grown tired of answering questions about why the brilliance she summons so easily everywhere else seems harder to come by at the Games. Yet Shiffrin kept dutifully answering the questions anyway, fully aware they would keep coming until the 2030 Games if she left Cortina empty-handed, the three medals she already has stashed away back home in Colorado somehow forgotten. This is part of the deal when you sign up for an event so large that the importance of everything that happens outside of it can get skewed, no matter how significant it may be. Is it frustrating? Of course it is. Yet Shiffrin understood it was a price she needed to be willing to pay. "In order to do this today, I kind of needed to accept the possibility that those questions would keep coming," she said. "It was like, 'Just don't resist it' and just live in my own moment." Over the course of 1 minute, 39.10 seconds of brilliance, Shiffrin delivered an indelible run that should shut up the critics she's tried so diligently to block out. She didn't race like a 30-year-old world-weary from the pressure that follows her wherever she goes. She raced with joy and precision. And really, isn't that kind of the point? While admitting she still doesn't quite know how to process the leaderboard when she glances at it following a run — all Shiffrin understands is that the color green next to her name is good because it means she's fastest — she didn't have to look at it after clinching gold. She just knew. "I can't even explain what it feels like to cross the finish line, and know before I saw the time that I did that ski, and then see the time and think, 'Holy (crap)'" Shiffrin said. Her time — a full 1.50 seconds faster than silver medalist Camille Rast of Switzerland — might have surprised her. The result, however, did not. The women who face her week in and week out know what they're up against when she's on the start list. Rast watched Shiffrin take a lead of nearly a second after a blazing first run and knew the dream of standing atop the podium here was over. "I was like, 'OK, gold is gone,' but the other two medals are still open," Rast said with a laugh. It's been that way for the better part of a decade. Shiffrin has already locked up a record ninth World Cup season title in her preferred discipline. When she's at her best, she is practically unbeatable. As she slowly made her way from interview to interview, doing her best to provide fresh, thoughtful answers, those who have watched her closely know only too well what it took for her to get here. "It probably wasn't easy for her to show her performance on a day like this," said Germany's Lena Duerr, who entered the final run in second to Shiffrin but saw her medal hopes evaporate after she missed the first gate. "The pressure for sure was high on her." It always is. And everyone in the sport knows it. The deeply introspective Shiffrin most of all. While she is quick to point out she hardly does this alone — the team that follows Shiffrin around the globe is a vital part of her success — when she's out on the slope, it's just her. So maybe it's fitting at the end of her fourth trip to Olympics that it was just Shiffrin alone, if only for a moment, drinking not in the glory of gold but the satisfaction that maybe for the first time, she took this event that asks for so much for those who compete and met it on her terms. "It just feels really good to be able to sort of let those doubts and uncertainties go," she said.