American Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates winning the gold medal in the alpine skiing women's slalom race at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, on Wednesday. (AP photo)

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin stood atop the Olympic podium, looking almost in disbelief at the gold medal around her neck.

The American skiing star hadn’t simply won a slalom race to end her eight-year medal drought at the Winter Games and underline her status as surely the greatest Alpine skier of all time.

She’d also won a battle with herself.

“It’s like,” Shiffrin said, before pausing, “… being born again.”

Racing in what she described as a “spiritual state,” Shiffrin put in two dominant runs in gorgeous conditions amid the jagged peaks of the Dolomites to win by a massive 1.50 seconds, making her the first American skier to win three Alpine gold medals.

In emotional scenes after the race, the 30-year-old Shiffrin was embraced by Camille Rast of Switzerland, who took silver, and bronze-medalist Anna Swenn Larsson before fighting back tears as she approached her mom and coach, Eileen, for a long, deep hug next to the finish area.

Through it all, Shiffrin said, she never stopped thinking about her father, Jeff, who died at the age of 65 in an accident at the family home in Colorado in February 2020.

“This was a moment I have dreamed about — I’ve also been very scared of this moment,” Shiffrin said. “Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience.

“And,” she added, her voice starting to tremble, “I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in life without my dad. And maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this, like, reality.”

It was the largest margin of victory in any Olympic Alpine skiing event since 1998 and the third biggest in women’s slalom — the event she won as a fresh-faced 18-year-old in Sochi in 2014 to buttress her rising status as a skiing superstar.

Twelve years later — and having failed to meet huge expectations at the 2022 Olympics, become the most successful World Cup skier of all time with a record 108 victories, and overcome the two biggest crashes of her career and an ensuing battle with post-traumatic stress disorder — she delivered again in her favorite event.

Her skiing career, in a sense, had just come full circle.

“Maybe,” she added, “just today, I realized what happened to me in Sochi.”

At the medal ceremony, she shook both of her hands by her side as she was about to receive her medal. When it was placed around her neck, she put one hand to her mouth.

For Shiffrin, this also was a release of the pressure that had been building after going eight Olympic races without a medal since adding gold and silver to her collection in Pyeongchang in 2018.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics