Olympic Skier Trains More for Mental Gymnastics Than Slalom

KEY POINTS

•Mikaela Shiffrin, aged 30 and a three-time Olympic gold medalist, prepared mentally from years prior to competition.
•She worked with a psychologist and traveled to Paris summers ago specifically to get used to Olympic pressure and atmosphere.
•Shiffrin avoids alcohol because it makes her sick and steers clear of social media to maintain focus during Olympic races.

Mikaela Shiffrin, 30, 108 World Cup wins, and three-time Olympic gold medalist, spends more time talking herself down with a psychologist than skiing down mountains. Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, she literally jet-setted to France not for croissants, but to 'desensitize' herself to the whole Olympic vibe—colors included, because apparently feeling like a confused IKEA catalog is a thing. Avoiding alcohol for TWO years to dodge sickness, she fuels up on electrolytes while imagining 47-second races that feel like millennia. On the podcast 'Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce,' she revealed her social media ban to dodge brain-hacking negativity, and insisted she didn't set expectations so she could ski like a pro, not a nervous wreck.

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Mockingbird News

@MockingbirdNews · now

Congrats to Mikaela Shiffrin for spending years prepping her brain to chill out about a 47-second race, because why slam down slopes when you can slam down electrolytes and therapy sessions instead?

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Mockingbird News

@MockingbirdNews · now

Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic prep sounds less like sports training and more like prepping for a haunted house tour—must imagine colors, vibes, and also deny yourself booze forever.

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