EDWARDS, Colorado — A month after the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Mikaela Shiffrin won her fourth overall title. A year after that, she broke Ingemar Stenmark’s long-standing record for most World Cup victories. Two years after that, she got her 100th World Cup win, establishing a mark that is certain to stand for decades, if not all time.
All this is to say that although the Olympics mean everything to the general public, they are only a piece of Shiffrin’s considerable legacy.
And she’s not quite sure how to square that.
“There’s this external factor that really heightens the importance of the Olympics. Each one that I’ve gone to, I feel like subconsciously I realized that. But was almost naïve to it. Or maybe blind to it a little bit,” Shiffrin, 30, told USA TODAY Sports.
“Now I think I consciously realize just how much people care for those two weeks every four years. And I don’t totally know what to do with that.”
