Mikaela Shiffrin Recalls Watching Security Footage of Father's Fatal Accident

Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin is opening up about her grief, six years after her father, Jeff Shiffrin, died at age 65 due to injuries sustained from a fall off his roof.

"I've never struggled with wanting to be alive," Mikaela, 31, told host Anderson Cooper on the Thursday, June 18 episode of his "All There Is With Anderson Cooper" podcast. "But there were so many points - and I just don't really know the proper wording here - but I think a lot of people feel, like, what is the point of my existence?"

In the immediate aftermath of her dad's death, Mikaela struggled to cope, even going back to home security footage of the fall, which resulted in Jeff suffering severe head trauma.

"I think my goal was to see how much time was he laying there with his brain bleeding until somebody actually found him," she said. "If this was under a minute, then maybe he has a chance of recovering. I think it was about eight and a half minutes."

She continued, "I went through this whole footage and I kind of saw the whole thing happen, which I don't know if I would suggest people do that."

After Jeff fell, Mikaela said the footage showed him attempting to prevent his blood from clotting, much like he would do when they traveled together. Jeff was an anesthesiologist, and Mikaela said he would keep his blood moving by laying down on the bed and lifting his foot up and down.

"And when he was laying there, I could see him doing that," she said. "And I was like, oh, he knows that he needs to like, somehow move his body, but he couldn't get up. And then he was unconscious again when our neighbor found him. I think it was 12 minutes [later] when the ambulance arrived."

Mikaela also recalled the months that followed her father's death where she wondered if it was worth it to return to competition, questioning whether skiing was a "good enough reason to want to exist."

"I experienced this overwhelming sense of apathy," she said. "I almost dreaded that there would come a point in time where my team and my family and the people around me would ask, like, ‘OK,, so when do you want to get back on snow?'"

"And that's just been an ongoing question in my head for probably at least the first two years, but especially the immediate few weeks," Mikaela continued. "Sleep is hard. I don't think I ate. I just felt like it was hard to feel the will to live."

Mikaela eventually did return to the snow, earning her third gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy by winning the slalom. After her victory, she reflected on her loss, saying one of the more difficult aspects was not feeling a spiritual connection with her dad, like others sometimes describe after losing loved ones.

"Maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this reality," she said in her press conference. "Instead of thinking I would be going in this moment without him, to take the moment to be silent with him."

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This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 11:18 AM.