Culture

Mikaela Shiffrin is back and hunting for the next milestone as a new season begins

Published

1 year ago

October 26, 2024

Mikaela Shiffrin is back and hunting for the next milestone as a new season begins

For Mikaela Shiffrin, the goalposts keep moving.

All that chatter about her setting the record for the most World Cup wins and becoming the greatest skier ever is so 2023. Now, with Shiffrin getting back to racing as the alpine season begins this weekend in Soelden, Austria, the talk has shifted to when she will get her 100th win, a rather silly number that few would have contemplated not long ago, before Shiffrin started collecting wins and crystal globes for season-long championships like they were Christmas ornaments.

She has 97 wins as the season begins, as well as three Olympic medals, two of them gold, five overall titles, 11 discipline titles, and 14 World Championship medals. That is all seriously silly.

To hear the 29-year-old Shiffrin talk about her career so far and what lies ahead is to understand how her work involves meeting a different set of standards than everyone else.

She will compete in slalom, giant slalom and super-G this season but has put downhill on the back burner for now. So of course she gets asked about why she isn’t also competing in the downhill.

She’s been at this since she was in her mid-teens, and yet the idea that she might be into the backside of her career remains hard to contemplate. She knows better than anyone how physically difficult it is to compete week after week so that she can get in the hunt for the season-long overall title and also peak in February for the Alpine World Championships in Austria, or next season, for the Olympics in Italy. Of course, she’s expected to do both, and win … obviously.

“It’s never obvious, it’s never easy,” Shiffrin said during a preseason conference call this week.

After six weeks sidelined by injury, Mikaela Shiffrin returned in March and won the slalom title at the 2024 World Cup season final. (Christophe Pallot / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)

Shiffrin had a revelatory moment this summer at the Paris Olympics. Her seats in the Olympic stadium for the 400-meter hurdles happened to be right next to those occupied by the family of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who is basically the Mikaela Shiffrin of her sport, or vice-versa, if you are track person rather than a skiing person.

Everyone in the Shiffrin camp was sure McLaughlin-Levrone would win — by a lot. She was as close to a guarantee as there was in Paris.

And yet, McLaughlin-Levrone’s family was on pins and needles.

They knew how hard this was, how anything could happen until she was over the final hurdle and floating to the finish. Shiffrin knows that, too. She and her team have been dealing with that every week for nearly a decade, along with all the stressors of being one of the more famous athletes in the world.

Now, strange as it may seem, Shiffrin will begin to find some calm where others might not necessarily think she might. After months of getting pulled in every direction, of balancing summer ski camps in South America and training blocks with sponsor obligations with promotional opportunities, and philanthropy, the racing begins. Once more, she can laser focus on dancing through the gates on a snow-covered mountain.

“It’s hard, it’s stressful, but it’s also peaceful, and that’s what I love about it,” she said.

She knows she is on the backside of her career but has no definite plans for how much longer after the 2026 Olympics she will compete.

After an injury-riddled season last year — somehow she still won the World Cup slalom title — Shiffrin is hoping for a smoother ride this year.

Shiffrin sprained the MCL and tibiofibular ligament in her knee in January. The injuries sidelined her for six weeks. She won two more races when she returned, easing doubts that still plague her whenever she is hurt or doesn’t ski for a chunk of time and it feels like the ski world is moving on without her.

“You feel pain or weakness and you’re like, ‘I don’t think I can do that,’ she said. ‘Logically I know I have done that, but I don’t think I can do it again.”

Even during a healthy season, she can experience those doubts when she doesn’t ski one discipline for a couple weeks and then has to return to it.

“It’s never obvious, it’s never easy,” Mikaela Shiffrin says of her expectations. The new alpine season begins this weekend in Austria. (Jonas Ericsson / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)

Will she be able to move her feet quickly enough to get around the tight slalom gates, she wonders?

It probably all sounds a bit silly to her competitors. Even if she isn’t competing in downhill for now — no word yet on her plans for the 2026 Olympics — Shiffrin is as good an all-around skier as there is. She has won 60 slalom races, 22 giant slalom, five super-G and four downhill.

To some extent, her offseason has been an exercise in easing those doubts as this opening weekend in Soelden approaches. Last summer she was plagued with tough luck with weather, which limited her time on the snow. Then she packed her racing schedule and began to feel like she was running on fumes. Then came the crash and the injury.

When this offseason started, she sat down with her mother, Eileen, who is her longest-serving coach, and tried to map out a plan so she could feel truly prepared at the start of the season. They came up with a mix of short camps and indoor skiing and a trip to South America to make sure she got the necessary time on the snow.

Every day, she would push herself slightly further. Even for the best skiers in the world, the sport is an exercise in risk tolerance. How fast can your mind allow your body to take a turn? How far will it allow you to fly on a jump?

“Every day, I stretch the rubber band a little bit,” Shiffrin said.

In Soelden this weekend, she plans to stretch it as far as she has in a long while, and even, maybe, find some peace as she does it.

(Top photo of Mikaela Shiffrin celebrating her slalom title at the 2024 World Cup season final in Austria in March: Franz Kirchmayr / SEPA.Media / Getty Images)

Culture

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

Published

3 days ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

new video loaded: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

To capture Jane Austen’s brief life and enormous impact, editors at The New York Times Book Review assembled a sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness she has brought to our lives.

By Jennifer Harlan, Sadie Stein, Claire Hogan, Laura Salaberry and Edward Vega

December 18, 2025

Culture

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

Published

5 days ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.

Culture

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

Published

6 days ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.

Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”

With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”

How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.

By ‘A Lady’

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)

Where the Magic Happened

Janice Chung for The New York Times

Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.

An Iconic Accessory

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.

Austen Onscreen

Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.

Jane Goes X-Rated

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.

A Lady Unmasked

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”

Wearable Tributes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.

The Austen Literary Universe

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)

A Botanical Homage

Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.

Aunt Jane

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.

Cultural Currency

Steve Parsons/Associated Press

In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.

In the Trenches

During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”

Baby Janes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.

The Austen Industrial Complex

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.

Around the Globe

Goucher College Special Collections & Archives, Alberta H. and Henry G. Burke Collection; via The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.

Playable Persuasions

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.

#SoJaneAusten

The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.

Bonnets Fit for a Bennett

Peter Flude for The New York Times

For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.

Most Ardently, Jane

The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

Stage and Sensibility

Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.

Austen 101

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”