CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy • The GOAT cried.

After ending her Olympic slump with a slalom victory so loud it shook the Dolomites, Mikaela Shiffrin took a private moment at the finish line to have a quiet conversation with her deceased father.

“Today, it was like maybe I just talk to him,” Shiffrin said. “Maybe he doesn’t specifically have to answer. Which is hard, but … it’s OK.”

In victory, her tears of joy flowed like champagne, and then the skier kissed Olympic gold for the first time in eight long years.

But this medal tasted different.

“This was a moment I have dreamed about. I’ve also been very scared of this moment,” said Shiffrin on Wednesday, when a tick over 99 seconds of superb slalom racing forever altered her Olympic legacy.

“Everything you do in life after losing someone you love is a new experience. It’s like being born again. And I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in life without my dad. And maybe today was the first time I could actually accept this as reality.”

How can anyone accuse Shiffrin of being a choke artist on skiing’s biggest stage ever again, now that she owns three golds from the Games in her career, more than any American alpine skier in history?

At age 30, Shiffrin is no longer that carefree kid who schussed down the slope on Golden Peak at Vail, afraid of nothing and unburdened by expectations. Shiffrin is now a corporation, constantly under pressure not to blink in the Olympics’ unforgiving glare.

Since the last time Shiffrin stood atop the podium at the Winter Games, her father, Jeff, died from a head injury in an accident at home in Colorado, and Eileen, her mother, who’s not only a trusted confidante but a pretty damn good ski coach, has been diagnosed with cancer.

Maybe that goes a long way in explaining why, at the finish line, Shiffrin was shocked to learn: “I was more spiritual than I usually am.”

The way Shiffrin won this race on the famed Olimpia delle Tofane was beyond dominant.

It was Greatest Of All Time-worthy. Secretariat on snow. The crown jewel of her career, which includes a record 108 victories on the World Cup circuit.

But since a tragic accident stole her father in the days before a pandemic swept across America in 2020, Shiffrin has skied with a hole in her heart.

“Part of my journey through grief has been challenging because I don’t feel this thing that a lot of people talk about — a deep spiritual connection with their (deceased) loved one,” Shiffrin said.

“I think about my dad all the time. I feel connected with him in my thoughts and when talking about him. But sometimes I’ve also been resentful of the people who talk about feeling this person who’s always here with me … And I’m like: Where? Like the bleep? Why do you get to feel that?”

After the first of two runs, Shiffrin was far and above the field, nearly a full second ahead of nearest competitor Lena Duerr of Germany. The Colorado native’s 0.82-second lead was akin to the Broncos owning a two-touchdown advantage at halftime.

But it’s slalom skiing, where there’s white snow as hard as black ice and more than five dozen gates to negotiate. There’s no sitting on a lead or milking the clock.

“Before the second run, I was trying to take a nap,” said Shiffrin, who has made a habit of catching 40 winks during the regular gap of nearly three hours between slalom heats.

On this bluebird winter day in the Italian Alps, however, she talked to the furniture and shed a few tears during the break, “because I was thinking about my Dad.”

With shadows from the jagged peaks above casting a shadow over the start gate and the track surface getting tackier by the minute, Shiffrin was slated to run last among the 30 finalists, then watched as Duerr tripped over the very first gate and crashed out of the race.

“This fear comes out,” Shiffrin admitted, “in the moments you don’t want to.”

The GOAT drove away the weakness that fear can instill with a simple mantra: strong skiing, strong turns.

And it worked.

Shiffrin was all gas and no brakes. Rather than playing it safe, she nearly doubled her lead to 1.5 seconds in the second heat. In a sport where the difference between first and fifth can be a hiccup, slalom dominance like this is seen once in a lifetime.

“To battle with Mikaela,” said silver medalist Camille Rast, “is not easy.”

For the eight long years between Olympic victories, however, Shiffrin’s toughest foe had been the voices of doubt inside her head.

And the lone way Shiffrin could shut up the chatter of critics: Win. Like she knows how to do better than any man or woman in the history of skiing.

“But it’s not always easy,” Shiffrin said. “Sometimes, it feels impossible.”

This victory was an impossible dream come true.

Finally able to mute the noise of her long Olympic nightmare, Shiffrin found a quiet moment of peace to share her golden moment with Dad.