Alpine skiing’s greatest of all time just pulled back the curtain on the real cost of being the best.
In a raw, 25-minute solo YouTube episode titled “Why I’m Still Skiing (And What’s Next),” Mikaela Shiffrin — the 31-year-old American superstar with a record-tying sixth overall World Cup crystal globe, nine of 10 slalom wins last season, and Olympic gold still fresh from Cortina — addressed the questions that follow her everywhere: Why keep going? When will you retire? And when’s the wedding?
Her answer to the last one stopped fans cold.
With a schedule that keeps her training, racing, and on the media circuit nearly year-round, Shiffrin revealed she spends only about five consistent weeks a year at her home in Edwards, Colorado — and the same limited window with her fiancé, fellow elite ski racer Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.
“That kind of means we don’t get much time to spend actual quality time together, let alone plan a wedding,” she said. “So, no, we haven’t actually started our wedding planning yet, and that does not stress me out.”
“I know who I want to spend my life with,” she added. “At this point we’re just trying to actually enjoy the limited time we get to spend together.”
The admission lands with extra weight because both are still deep in the grind of professional racing. Their calendars rarely align for more than fleeting stretches, a reality many elite athletes quietly live with but few state so plainly.
Shiffrin used the same video to shut down retirement chatter. After 16 years at the top, people assume she’s done everything there is to do. She isn’t buying it.
“It’s not about records or numbers for me,” she said. Challenge motivates her, but what really drives her is curiosity: “I just want to learn about what’s around the corner. And I want to see if the work I do right now can impact what’s around the corner.”
She still chases the pure feeling of the turns and technique — the part of skiing that first hooked her. Right now that curiosity is pointed at super-G, her “passion project,” where she’s deliberately exposing herself to higher speeds and longer boards so her brain can relearn how to process the chaos.
Even her off-season is relentless: equipment testing, two-a-day gym sessions chosen by proximity to the right facilities, southern-hemisphere snow camps, then Europe for final prep. A recent whirlwind week in New York for podcasts, the ESPYs, Fanatics Fest, and the Time100 sports gala pushed the self-described introvert far outside her comfort zone — and she treated it as another chance to grow.
She also spoke about using her platform for issues that matter to her: grief, PTSD, mental health, access to snow sports, cancer research, and climate change. The messages from fans who say those conversations make them feel less alone, she said, are what make the exposure worthwhile.
For a athlete who has rewritten the record books and still shows no signs of slowing down, the five-week confession is a rare window into the personal price of excellence. The GOAT isn’t retiring. She’s not planning a wedding anytime soon. She’s simply trying to squeeze real life into the margins of a life built for the mountain.
And for now, five weeks is all she gets.
