The Race Where the Winner Takes Home a Reindeer
The slalom race in Levi, Finland is the perfect way to kick-off skiing season—and the holidays
Our book, Religion of Sports, is coming out NEXT TUESDAY, on December 5! In it, we show you why sports aren’t just like a religion; we tell you why they are one. And we have help from some people you might have heard from, sharing never-before-heard stories about Tom Brady, Simone Biles, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, and many more.
Over on our Instagram page, we’re running several contests for readers like you to win a free book. Just comment which athlete made you a believer in the Religion of Sports, and you could win! Check it out!
To give you a taste of what to expect, portions of this article are adapted from “Religion of Sports” the book! It’s about the great Mikaela Shiffrin. I hope you enjoy it.
In sports, success is measured in any number of ways: trophies, cups, rings, belts, plates, jugs, green jackets, gold jackets, medals. This week, organizers announced that the prize for an upcoming college football bowl game would be…a pop tart.
Yet a few weeks ago, in Levi, Finland, up in the Lapland near the North Pole, skier Mikaela Shiffrin took home a prize unlike any other—a prize that couldn’t be more perfect to kick off the holiday season.
Shiffrin won a reindeer.
Her seventh reindeer.
As in: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer…She only needs one more, and she’d have the full sleigh. But hey, there’s always next year.
Levi, a slalom event, traditionally kicks off the women’s World Cup season. The reindeer are a way to connect skiers to the unique culture of the Lapland, where herding the animals remains one of the region’s oldest livelihoods, and back in the day, just about everyone here was pulled by reindeers on a sleigh. Every year, Johanna Hietanen who operates a centuries-old farm in the area picks a baby reindeer to award to the event’s champion. They get to name it, and then it returns to Hietanen’s farm, where skiers receive periodical updates and get to visit whenever they return to Levi.
Shiffrin especially has had fun naming her her. The first reindeer became Rudolph, “because,” she explained, “then everybody knows, no matter how old or young you are, that Rudolph the Reindeer exists.” The next was Sven for Frozen—which will come into play later in our story. There’s also Mr. Gru, Ingemar (after Ingemar Steinmark, the legendary skier), Sunny, and Lorax. This year, Shiffrin received hundreds of suggestions but settled on naming her reindeer Grogu (after Baby Yoda).
Shiffrin is the most dominant female skier in history, and by any measure, one of the greatest athletes of all time—full stop. The win in Levi was her 89th World Cup victory, extending her victory with no signs of slowing down soon. You might remember that at the Beijing Olympics, though, for one of the first times in her career, she struggled. (We detail the complete story of Shiffrin’s comeback in Religion of Sports the book! Out next Tuesday!)
Entering those Olympics, Shiffrin was expected to contend for an unprecedented five gold medals across several skiing events. But what most didn’t know is that Shiffrin was still processing with the sudden death of her grandfather, who taught Shiffrin the sport, earlier in the year. She couldn’t focus. Couldn’t feel like herself. And when she made her way down the slopes at her first Olympic event, she skied out of bounds, a major error and something that she almost never did. Then in her next race, she did it again.
While the rest of the competitors whizzed by on the course, Shiffrin sat on the side of the mountain, right in the snow, trying to diagnose the problem. Was it her body? Her mind? What was going on? She sat there for 20 minutes, searching, and suddenly a simple thought bubbled to the surface. “There’s a scene in Frozen II where Anna sings, ‘Just do the next right thing,’” Shiffrin said. “That was the thought. Not, ‘What is the next day going to bring?’ Or, ‘What is the next race going to bring?’ Just, ‘What’s the next step I have to take?’”
Shriffin stood up and brushed the snow off her pants. Unsteadily, she skied in the rest of her events at the Olympics, and though she didn’t win or even look much like herself again, she just focused on that simple thought: “Do the next right thing.” Not focusing on winning races, focusing on getting to the starting line. Not caring about setting world records—thinking only about the next turn.
A few weeks after the Olympics in 2022, Shiffrin won the World Cup finals in Courcheval, France. That race rewards its champions with a gigantic glass trophy in the shape of a globe. “I really don’t know if we actually have a plan to get the thing home,” she told reporters after the race. “It doesn’t count as carry-on luggage, but you definitely don’t want to check it. It gets a little complicated. But that’s okay.”
A little complicated. But that’s okay. That’s as good an approach as any to challenges you might face. All you can do is narrow your focus to avoid getting overwhelmed. Just do the next right thing.
Before you know it, you might ski so well that you own a reindeer farm.
⚽ Did you miss our announcement? The newest ROS project, World According to Football, is coming TONIGHT at 8 p.m. on Showtime. Narrated and produced by Trevor Noah, the show takes you around the world to some of the most incredible soccer cultures in the world. We can’t wait for you to see it.
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