For Mikaela Shiffrin, a Week Without Races Is a Resounding Success

The coronavirus threat didn’t keep friends and competitors from trying to wrap Shiffrin in welcome-back hugs. On Wednesday night, on their way out of town, two of Shiffrin’s United States teammates, Paula Moltzan and Nina O’Brien, stopped by to deliver an early birthday present: a basket containing 25 individually wrapped gifts. Shiffrin gave them foot bumps in lieu of an embrace, and then repeated to them what she has told everyone else in recent days: “I am leaning on you guys, just not to the point of physical contact.”

Shiffrin had spent most of Wednesday, a designated day off from training, poring over her sponsor contracts. Outside, snow fell as softly as confetti all morning, conditions that would have delighted her father, she said. “I feel like he sort of lives in the snowflakes that fall,” she said. But that was not why he was very much on her mind.

“Up to this point, my dad was the one who would read over my contracts,” said Shiffrin, who was making notes about one of them when she received the text from event organizers informing her that her longest season was officially over.

“I was really looking forward to these races, if nothing else because it’s been a place to put my mind and my energy for the last couple of weeks,” Shiffrin said. “A place to focus but also a distraction.”

The hardest step in mourning is that first one that takes you out of the house and out to face the world again. So whatever Shiffrin lost by not being able to race three times this week, she recognized that she gained infinitely more.

“This last week,” she said, “has been really monumental in the whole grieving process.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/sports/skiing/mikaela-shiffrin-world-cup.html