Mikaela Shiffrin simply took house her third Olympic gold medal in girls’s slalom on the 2026 Winter Olympics at Milan Cortina. The skier couldn’t have gotten her second of glory with out her mother and father.
Shiffrin has been open about how her father’s dying has affected her competitors and talents. “This was a second I’ve dreamed about. I’ve additionally been very fearful of this second,” she mentioned in a press convention after successful gold. “All the things in life that you simply do after you lose somebody you’re keen on is sort of a new expertise. It’s like being born once more, and I nonetheless have so many moments the place I resist this. I don’t need to be in life with out my dad.”
“Possibly right this moment was the primary time I may really settle for this actuality. And as an alternative of considering I’d be going on this second with out him, to take the second to be silent with him,” she mentioned, combating again tears. “And with the entire group who’s right here with me now, and with my mother, who’s right here with me now and has been with me for the reason that starting. It was just a bit extra religious than I normally am, however I’m actually grateful for that.”
Who’s Mikaela Shiffrin’s dad, Jeff?

Jeff Shiffrin was an anaesthetist based mostly in Vail, Colo. He met his spouse, Eileen, when he was taking his residency at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts, the place she was an ICU nurse. He was a skier at Dartmouth.
Jeff and Eileen had been closely concerned and supportive in Mikaela’s profession in snowboarding, and so they enrolled her and their older son Taylor, in Ski and Snowboard Membership Vail.
Jeff Shiffrin died on account of a head trauma accident on Feb. 2, 2020. “He was doing one thing on the roof and by some means, he fell off and hit his head,” Eileen shared within the Adidas video. “Mikaela laid together with her head on his chest for 9 hours. We ended up having to withdraw help, and she or he heard his coronary heart cease beating, in order that’s a tough factor to undergo.”
She added, “We misplaced our rock — the person who all of us cherished essentially the most.”
Whereas grieving her father’s dying, Mikaela’s mother revealed that she was considering her snowboarding profession. I didn’t suppose Mikaela would ever ski once more,” Eileen mentioned in adidas’ Illuminated docuseries. “I don’t suppose she thought she would, both.”
She took a break from snowboarding and began it up once more in hopes of getting nearer to her father. “That entire season, we didn’t need to be there,” Mikaela recalled within the docuseries. “There was this loopy battle between, ‘I don’t actually need to be right here or present, however I nonetheless like ski racing, and I nonetheless am good at it, and I nonetheless need to win races.’”
Throughout her races, she wears a locket with footage of her dad and textual content inscribed, “At all times with you, love Dad.”
Who’s Mikaela Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen?

Eileen Shiffrin is Mikaela’s coach. She was an ICU nurse and have become her daughter’s coach when she was a toddler.
The 2 have an unbreakable bond. “In all probability one of many components that has made a distinction between my profession and anyone else is having her to maintain me on monitor, to assist me keep sane, to be my greatest buddy, to be my mum, to be my coach,” Shiffrin advised CNN in March 2017.
On the 2025 World Cup, Eileen missed her daughter’s races as a result of she was recognized with most cancers and had six weeks of therapies.






