LOVELAND VALLEY — Turns out ski racers aren’t immune to the misery of bitter cold. Not even slalom prodigy Mikaela Shiffrin, who has an Olympic gold medal and two world championship titles at age 20 but shivers just like the rest of us.
It was zero degrees here one morning last week when Shiffrin and her mother, Eileen, arrived for a training session after commuting from their home in EagleVail.
Mikaela would rather be in Europe on the World Cup circuit, but she injured her right knee warming up for a race Dec. 12 in Sweden. She has been in Colorado rehabbing — surgery was not required — and this was her fourth on-snow session since the injury in hopes of returning to the World Cup this month.
“Oh, my God, it’s so cold,” Shiffrin said on arrival. “Why do we do this?”
She was good-natured about it, though, cordially greeting U.S. Ski Team head women’s technical coach Brandon Dyksterhouse when he arrived.
PHOTOS: Mikaela Shiffrin trains to return from injury
“What’s up, boss?” she said.
Dyksterhouse, who arrived from Europe the day before, joked he was just here for some high-altitude bicycle training. The real reason was to work with Shiffrin, one of the U.S. Ski Team’s two most high-profile athletes along with that other Vail Valley resident, Lindsey Vonn.
“We get to have him now,” Eileen said.
Mikaela warmed her boots by a heater, then pulled on multiple pieces of cold-weather gear and wrapped a bandana around her face.
“Now I feel like when I was 4,” Mikaela told Eileen, “and you used to bundle me up.”
Taking periodic breaks inside to thaw, Shiffrin would spend the better part of four hours running slalom on a race lane set aside for her under the watchful eyes of Dyksterhouse, assistant coach Jeff Lackie … and Mom.
Eileen and Mikaela have a unique arrangement within the ski team. Eileen understands racing technique and knows Mikaela’s skiing better than anyone. She travels the World Cup with Mikaela offering technical input, which Dyksterhouse respects, and it was that way throughout the training session on this day. Sometimes Eileen added her thoughts to what he told Mikaela. Occasionally she rephrased what he was saying in a way she knew Mikaela would understand.
“Mikaela is unique because she has family that pushes her, but she also pushes herself,” Dyksterhouse said. “The combination of the two makes it lethal. Sometimes you have one or the other. You have an athlete that pushes or a parent who pushes, but (the Shffrins) thrive on each other’s passion for the sport.”
Eileen can go places a coach might be reluctant to probe.
“She’s like the one person who will tell me to stop being a baby,” Mikaela said. “I definitely wouldn’t have it any other way. I think in some ways people are afraid to put the champion in their place. If I talk back to her, she just talks right back to me.”
Shiffrin’s knee was feeling fine. Her goal in training was getting back the rhythm and timing for slalom, the most technical ski discipline. Even for someone who won gold medals and World Cup slalom titles the past three seasons, it takes repetition to be sharp.
“I always have this fear, ‘I’m skiing really well, what if I forget how to do that?’ ” Shiffrin said over a cheeseburger in the lodge after training. “Normally if I ski on a day-to-day basis I won’t forget, but when I’m coming back after (seven) weeks off snow, the things my mind remembers, my legs forget. Just trying to remind them what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Her form wasn’t bad, just not as “crisp” as it must be to win races.
“I think she’s in a really good place,” Eileen said. “The timing will get easier and start coming back. But her turns and her knee seem super solid. The whole thing about slalom, it’s critical, you have to be in slalom gates every few days to ski at that level.”
Team Shiffrin planned to return to Europe in midmonth and resume racing Feb. 27-28, but then came word that a slalom canceled by weather Jan. 31 in Maribor, Slovenia, will be made up next Monday in Crans Montana, Switzerland. Shiffrin probably will go to Europe a week earlier than planned to race that slalom.
Shiffrin won the first two slaloms this season in Aspen, one by a World Cup record margin of 3.07 seconds, before getting injured two weeks later. When she is back in form, she could be even more dominant than she was the past three seasons.
“She can run more direct, on a cleaner ski, than any human being on the planet,” Dyksterhouse said. “Aspen was when we had a glimpse of what she’s capable of. What she did in training leading up to Aspen, I don’t think anyone would believe me, but it was light-years better than even what she did in (Aspen).”
Mikaela is pleased to be skiing again but not overjoyed. She still isn’t doing what she wants.
“I love skiing, but to be honest, I just love ski racing,” Mikaela said at lunch, cheeks still red from her frigid training. “The whole goal — my job and the reason I love this — is because eventually I’m going to get into a start gate and know I can win.”
John Meyer: jmeyer@denverpost.com or @johnmeyer
