As Mikaela Shiffrin plans the subsequent part of her record-setting profession as a skier, she is wanting, as she at all times has, to the instance of one other feminine megastar who has skilled kindred highs and lows and highs in her profession: Taylor Swift.
The American skier Shiffrin is essentially the most profitable, and precocious, Alpine racer in historical past, having smashed the mark for World Cup victories, by men and women, whereas nonetheless in her prime snowboarding years. The American singer-songwriter Swift is the world’s biggest pop star, smashing music business information one after one other.
When Shiffrin made her debut on the World Cup circuit, she was simply shy of turning 16, the identical age Swift was when she started recording her debut album 5 years earlier. They’ve each been teenage sensations lavished with reward and revenue. Whereas Swift, named Time journal’s person of the year for 2023, would possibly proper now be essentially the most well-known human on the planet, Shiffrin, celebrated at dwelling, has bona fide rock star standing in Europe, the place ski racing is the nationwide sport of a number of international locations. They’re each on the prime of their respective mountains.
They’ve been innovators, history-makers and main figures of their high-wire professions. However like many caught within the popular culture maelstrom, they’ve skilled intense, barbed criticism after any failure, actual or perceived. Every has brazenly handled a guardian’s demise or severe sickness and every has taken prolonged breaks from performing.
A Swiftie since she was 13, Shiffrin, like legions of different women and girls, sees herself in Swift and has come to acknowledge elemental parallels of their careers and lives. For perspective, Shiffrin, 28, turns to her idol.
In July, Shiffrin rented a set for Swift’s Eras Tour live performance in Denver, an occasion Shiffrin described as “three hours of jumping up and down while singing every song at the top of my lungs.” Inside that have, Shiffrin contemplated if there was a lesson that might assist form the subsequent “era” of her personal luminous profession.
Had Swift, the teenager prodigy who’s now 34, helped level the best way from one stage to a different?
“Absolutely, because I’ve spent 15 years studying Taylor Swift and she has been guiding me a little bit every step of the way,” Shiffrin stated in a latest interview in Vermont, the place she claimed the ninetieth of her 93 profession World Cup victories. “It’s why most Swifties become Swifties. It feels like her music is speaking directly to you. Her experiences resonate; I’ve always tried to learn from them.”
Shiffrin’s mom, Eileen, a former ski racer who can also be certainly one of her coaches, insisted that Swift had offered steering that’s extra multifaceted and complicated than it may appear.
“Miki’s sport and career thrives on creativity,” Eileen wrote in an electronic mail final month, utilizing Mikaela’s household nickname. She added that “every new Taylor Swift song, concert and video,” is an inspiration and motivation to her daughter.
Eileen Shiffrin, who praised Swift’s “street smarts” and enterprise acumen, continued: “She keeps Miki ticking like she does the whole world. And she stands her ground, as she should, and that’s a great role model.”
As Mikaela Shiffrin, who has by no means met Swift, recalled varied chapters of her public journey — beautiful racing successes, ill-timed flops, the perils of fame, the unintentional demise of her father in 2020 — Shiffrin readily recognized methods Swift had influenced her responses to every scenario.
That long-distance tutelage started when the preternaturally gifted Shiffrin, nurtured within the Colorado mountains and at a venerable Vermont ski academy, received three World Cup races and a world championship gold medal as a highschool senior. A 12 months later, in 2014, she turned the youngest slalom champion in Olympic historical past, at 18, and was thrust into a world sporting highlight that has solely appeared to enlarge with every season.
However since her days as a 13-year-old listening to Swift’s 2008 album “Fearless” on repeat, she stated, she has regarded for clues on tips on how to stay as a star.
“Granted, Taylor is a big fish in a big pond and I’m more of a big fish in a small pond,” Shiffrin stated. “But you can see how she’s handled the attention, because she was a teenager too. She was able to hold up and work on her music. And while she’s very comfortable sharing a lot of her life, she builds a layer of protection when she needs it. She can disappear. That does seem to give her energy.
“I took all that in and kind of assimilated it. Although it was hard for me because I had to go from being an extreme introvert to being comfortable around a lot of cameras and microphones. It’s a bit funny having to go through life quantifying yourself as an introvert but having to live it in an extroverted way.”
After successful gold and silver medals on the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, Shiffrin received an unprecedented 17 races within the following season. On the time, a five- or six-win Alpine season would have been thought-about affluent. However initially of the subsequent season, Shiffrin didn’t match the astonishing tempo she had set a 12 months earlier.
“People started to say that I’d lost my touch, that maybe I had peaked and my career was fading,” Shiffrin stated with a glance of exasperation as she slumped backward right into a lounge chair. “I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, everybody’s saying all this stuff about me like I’m never going to be a good skier again.’ ”
Shiffrin was reminded of Swift’s “Reputation” album from a number of years earlier, and once more noticed parallels.
“That album was built of basically having her reputation go incredibly downhill, or at least that’s how she perceived it with all the feuds that were going on at the time,” Shiffrin stated. “But she came back in a big, big way. I related to the album because it made me feel like life is full of ebbs and flows. And that everything is probably going to be OK.”
Shiffrin rallied in January 2020, with successive victories. However roughly every week after the second of these restorative triumphs, on Feb. 1, her older brother, Taylor, reached her by cellphone in Europe to say that their father, Jeff Shiffrin, had been severely harm at dwelling in Colorado. Returning to Denver, Mikaela climbed onto Jeff’s hospital mattress for a number of hours, a vigil that ended along with his demise on Feb. 2.
The household has declined to disclose particulars of what occurred; a coroner dominated the demise an accident and listed the trigger as a head harm.
Shiffrin did not race for the subsequent 9 months.
On this month’s interview, with out prompting, Shiffrin recalled that Swift’s 2020 album “Folklore” got here out 5 months after her father’s demise and that it included “Epiphany.” Swift has stated the track explores the emotional misery of well being care staff on the top of the Covid-19 pandemic and of troopers at warfare, a correlation that pays homage to certainly one of Swift’s grandfathers, who was a battle-hardened U.S. Marine in World Struggle II.
Shiffrin performed “Epiphany” again and again.
“She literally addressed the most unforeseeable and horrific experience I ever have gone through,” Shiffrin stated of Swift, whose dad and mom have every handled most cancers. “It speaks directly to the experiences I had in the hospital with my dad.
“It was hard to listen to and heart-wrenching but also uplifting at the same time, which is something I really needed at that time.”
Shiffrin’s return to competitors within the 2021-22 season included a string of triumphant outcomes, in addition to a surprising, demoralizing outing on the Beijing Olympics, the place she did not win a medal. Since then she has received 20 races, which places her on tempo for roughly 130 profession victories if she have been to race 5 extra years. The earlier World Cup wins document, which stood for 34 years, was 86. She has received 14 world championship medals, one shy of essentially the most in a profession.
However no matter Shiffrin’s future holds, she is bound of two issues. The primary is that given her degree of sporting fame, Shiffrin might probably organize to satisfy Taylor Swift, however she is afraid to take action.
“I’d probably trip over myself and be so tongue-tied,” Shiffrin stated, laughing. “And then it’d be memorable to her because it’s the first time she’s experienced, like, a goofball.”
The second certainty is that she is going to use Swift as a mannequin to assist outline the subsequent period of her profession, no matter what number of Alpine snowboarding information she accumulates.
“Taylor Swift has reset so many records and held so many titles in the music industry that they have had to create new ways to measure her success,” Shiffrin stated. “And I’ve noticed that she just keeps going.”
Does that assist resolve Shiffrin’s central dilemma: What to do subsequent?
“Well, there’s an entire universe inside Taylor Swift’s mind that we haven’t tapped into yet — maybe we’ve tapped into 1 percent of what she can accomplish because of her music,” Shiffrin stated. “And I think about my skiing in a similar way. I’m closer now to reaching my potential, but it’s not about a record or another title.
“I’ve noticed Taylor just keeps going. In a way, you never finish doing that work.”
