“If you imagine a rubber band, if you stretch it too much, it’ll break. But if you stretch it a little bit, it becomes a little bigger. Stretch it a little more, it becomes bigger,” Mikaela Shiffrin told me when I asked about her desire to start racing Super G and downhill races on the World Cup. “I want to ease myself into a level where all of a sudden I’ll be able to race within my comfort zone. Then the risk is a lot lower.”

You can read the full story with Shiffrin—the Olympic slalom gold medalist and World Cup champ—on ExcelleSports.com.