“You Didn’t Finish Essentially on Purpose”: Ski Icon Mikaela Shiffrin Got a Sad Reality Check on Her Lost Races at Beijing Olympics 2022

It was in May of last year, after the conclusion of a ski season that saw Mikaela Shiffrin, one of the greatest female alpine racers in existence, compete in a catastrophic Beijing Winter Olympics. She and her partner were scheduled to board a plane for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, which would take them farther away from those Games—at least emotionally. But things soon took an interesting turn.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist received a phone call that shook her to the core. She had to come back to get to the bottom of the matter. 

A mysterious phone call for Mikaela Shiffrin

The anonymous caller was a german fan. One who claimed to know the reason behind Shiffrin’s defeat. Shiffrin left the tournament with devastating stats. Five events, three instances of going off-course, a 9th place, and an 18th. But this one german fan, who got hold of Shiffrin’s number mysteriously, called her with utmost urgency to let her know the real reason (in his opinion) for her loss.

Confused and dumbfounded, the US alpine ski racer said, “He felt like I, subconsciously, didn’t want to get to the finish.” The caller explained how she had been affected by her father’s death in February 2020. Shiffrin thought that the phone call was rather strange. 

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“And this guy was saying: You subconsciously didn’t finish essentially on purpose, because you didn’t want to get to the finish knowing that he would not be there,” she stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Agreeing with the fact that the caller’s words were indeed a little off-putting after an already disappointing tournament, she said that they might yet have had some element of truth to them. In Soelden, Austria, on Saturday, the 27-year-old Shiffrin begins her 12th World Cup campaign. She is not far behind retiring World Cup record holder Lindsey Vonn’s 82 alpine wins, with 74 victories in her career.

The loss of a kind soul

Jeffrey Shiffrin was a former alpine ski racer and the father of Mikaela Shiffrin. On February 2020, she took to her social media to express her sorrow as she elucidated how her family along with herself was devastated at the loss of Jeffrey.

“He was the firm foundation of the family and we miss him terribly,” stated Shiffrin in an Instagram post. Having published a 3200-word Meditation in the Player’s Tribune just a few days before the anonymous phone call, the athlete expressed how the caller’s perspective was interesting. 

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Her father had been by her side during the past two Olympic games that she had competed in. Jeff’s absence during the race was the real reason for her failure to perform according to the anonymous fan. In retrospect, the skiing champion added that it was indeed something meaningful that had happened to her during that season.