Mikaela Shiffrin may be the most decorated alpine skier in history, a six-time overall World Cup champion and the undisputed GOAT of the gates. But the 31-year-old American just dropped a truth bomb that feels almost rebellious for a winter-sport legend: she might love summer more than winter.
“I think I’m actually a summer girl,” Shiffrin revealed in a recent interview. Warm weather, light clothes, and cooling off in the water put her firmly in her element. As a kid, her family headed to Hawaii every summer for windsurfing on Maui — still her absolute “happy place” to this day.
That doesn’t mean she’s lounging poolside all season. For elite ski racers, summer is peak training time. Shiffrin has been logging serious hours: indoor race training at Alpincenter Hamburg-Wittenburg in Germany (a longtime staple for stacking hundreds of slalom gates a day), on-snow camps in Chile at El Colorado and Valle Nevado to fine-tune her Atomic skis, spring sessions at Copper Mountain and Mammoth with the U.S. team and fiancé Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, plus relentless gym work focused on core strength, weighted step-ups, pull-ups, and conditioning.
She still finds room for the good stuff. Time with Kilde (including SUP sessions and beach escapes), family in Colorado, tennis with her mom Eileen, acoustic guitar sessions, and the occasional media whirlwind — most recently a week in New York City doing things that push her introverted comfort zone.
In short, summer for Mikaela Shiffrin is equal parts grind and glow-up: building the power that will carry her into the next World Cup and Olympic cycles, while soaking up the sunshine she quietly prefers. The ski queen may live for the winter, but she’s thriving when the snow melts.
