Alpine skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin was paying attention when gymnastics superstar Simone Biles opened up about being burdened by “the weight of the world” and sat out a string of finals at the Tokyo Olympics six months ago.
Shiffrin was listening, too, when swimming superstar Caeleb Dressel revealed, after finishing first in five races at the Summer Games, how “terrifying” it was to confront “so much pressure in one moment; your whole life boils down to a moment.”
Observed Shiffrin: "You can't control the outcome and that's a really uncomfortable place to be."
Empathizing with other athletes’ frank conversations about mental health got the 26-year-old from Colorado thinking about what awaits her at the Beijing Olympics, where the first of what could be five individual races for Shiffrin is next Monday’s giant slalom, an event she won at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
There’s the physical aspect of what she’ll need to do on the slopes. What she’ll need to do before competing to prepare. What she’ll need to do afterward to recover. And then there’s the psychological side of it all, a lot of which comes down to absorbing or deflecting the anxiety and stress that derive from expectations emanating from everywhere for someone successful enough to own three Olympic medals, three World Cup overall titles and six world championship golds.