CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy – Mikaela Shiffrin showed up at the Olympics, rocking and ready for her close-up in front of the whole wide world, then promptly got rudely photobombed by a total klutz.

Damn, girl. Can you say em-bar-rass-ing?

The 30-year-old Colorado native is the greatest skier since the invention of snow … except when the planet’s eyes are fixed on her at the Winter Olympics.

Only 90 minutes after arriving at this postcard-perfect mountain town on Saturday, skiing’s reigning superstar met a big press corps that had squeezed into a tiny room. She was all smiles until somebody pointed out a poster of Shiffrin that seemed to be devilishly peeking over her right shoulder.

A big photo on the poster depicted Shiffrin decked out in Team USA colors and a bib featuring the Olympic rings from the 2022 Games in China.

It was a harsh reminder of a very rough patch in her career. Favored to win three gold medals, she came home empty.

Known for slicing and dicing turns on the mountain, Shiffrin turned her signature races into demolition derbies.

In two of her best events, the slalom and giant slalom, Shiffrin recorded a Did Not Finish, spinning off the course so close to the start that each DNF might’ve more appropriately been designated as a WTF.

The poster served as a reminder impossible to ignore. She took one glance at a huge photo of her biggest flop on the slopes and cracked a joke.

“Pretty cool,” Shiffrin said. At least “it’s a picture where I was on my feet, you know?” 

Pausing to let her punch line land, Shiffrin peered into a room of grizzled journalists, many of whom squirmed a little in their seats, not quite sure how to react.

Puzzled by the seriousness of her audience, Shiffrin thought: Oh, come on!

“I believe that deserved a bigger laugh,” she said.

And that was the precise moment when I was sold on this idea: Every other Olympic skier on the mountain is in big, heaping trouble.

After three previous appearances at the Winter Games — when everything, from crummy skiing weather to the headspace of a woman who looked off-balance while carrying the burden of America’s hopes on her back, has conspired against greatness – Shiffrin can now laugh at her Olympic follies.

Since taking the World Cup circuit by storm as a precocious teenager, Shiffrin has finished atop the podium 108 times, a feat unrivaled by anyone in the sport’s history.

And that’s why it nearly defies explanation why Shiffrin has earned only three medals across three Winter Games, especially after becoming the youngest racer to win the Olympic slalom in Russia.

I was an eyewitness on the mountain on that glorious February day back in 2014, and have also had a front-row seat to the frustration on Shiffrin’s face after some of her most disappointing races.

But I’ve never seen Shiffrin more comfortable in her own skin than she is now.

Instead of trying to fill NBC’s broadcast schedule with golden moments by entering more Olympic events than any sane athlete should attempt, Shiffrin has wisely decided to compete at Cortina in what she does best.

She will race slalom twice, including Tuesday in the team combined, when Shiffrin is expected to be paired with U.S. downhiller Breezy Johnson, and it will be an Olympic-sized letdown if they don’t win gold.

“Judgments,” said Shiffrin, acknowledging how harsh the spotlight can be, “can be made on a sole moment.”

When talking about the need for speed to be competitive in the Olympic giant slalom after a frightening wreck in 2024 left her with a puncture wound to the abdomen and lingering mental trauma, Shiffrin again served up some self-deprecating humor.

“Might just be that I don’t particularly like to go that fast,” she deadpanned. “I feel more like my aunt than my mom, who really likes to ski fast.”

But the way Shiffrin scored the most direct hit to my funny bone was with a subtle inside joke about needing constant technique work on every turn down the mountain.

“I would like to be more committed to my outside ski … The outside ski is the boss,” she said. “If you’re on your outside ski, you’re in the driver’s seat.”

That ski thought was hilarious to a weekend warrior like me. Here’s why:

Snow in the Rockies is what lured me to Colorado for my first ski trip in 1977, and I’m still crazy for champagne powder after all these years. Forever in search of the perfect turn, I frequently recite coaching tips to myself on the hill. Among my favorite mantras is to glance at my outside ski and whisper: Be the boss, be the boss …

So it makes me grin that the GOAT is a little more like you and me than Shiffrin lets on.

She has become a woman in full by allowing that goofy girl inside her to come out and play. For example, upon recently learning from a trainer that her lower back is ripped with well-defined abs, Shiffrin admitted, “I wish I had more of them in the front.”

The best to ever click boots into boards got photo-bombed Saturday by a klutz of her Olympic past.

And who laughed the hardest? It was Shiffrin. At herself.

When you’re a legend, pressure is omnipresent at the Games.

“But like Billie Jean King said,” Shiffrin noted, “pressure is a privilege.”

This time, instead of tightening the screws on herself, Shiffrin seems ready to let her hair down and be a goofy little girl having fun on the Olympic hill.

Let the gold times roll.