Thursday afternoon, roughly one month from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Mikaela Shiffrin was still a bit out of breath from a slalom training session in Austria. But it felt good, and not just because Shiffrin, an eight-time Olympic and world champion, is once again atop the Alpine World Cup overall standings.
“I finally feel like myself again,” she said in a phone interview.
Ten weeks ago, as she sat in the kitchen of her Colorado home, Shiffrin all but predicted her comeback after nearly two years mourning the accidental death of her father, a series of nettlesome injuries and uneven results (by her record-setting standards).