Mikaela Shiffrin Tearfully Opens Up About Final Moments with Her Dying Father: 'I Heard His Heart Stop'

Gina KalsiTue, June 23, 2026 at 2:22 PM UTC

0

Mikaela Shiffrin on the 'All There Is with Anderson Cooper' podcast and with her father Jeff ShiffrinCredit: CNN/Youtube; Mikaela Shiffrin/Instagram -

Mikaela Shiffrin shared emotional details about her final moments with her father Jeff Shiffrin before he died in 2020

She opened up about hearing her dad's "heart stop" beating and lying in bed with him for nine hours before his life support machine was turned off

The Olympic skier's podcast appearance also saw her discuss watching security footage of her father's accident to understand what happened

Mikaela Shiffrin has opened up about the final moments she shared with her father before he died.

The Olympic gold medalist skier, 31, discussed her father's tragic accident in February 2020 with Anderson Cooper on his CNN podcast, All There Is with Anderson Cooper, on Thursday, June 18.

Jeff Shiffrin died at the age of 65 after he fell from the roof of their family home in Edwards, Colo., and sustained severe head trauma.

Mikaela Shiffrin with her parents, Eileen and Jeff ShiffrinCredit: Tom Pennington/Getty

The sportswoman, who considered her dad her biggest champion, said she received a call from her older brother, Taylor Shiffrin, 33, telling her about the incident and asking her to come home.

"The last images I have of him are pretty gruesome," Shiffrin told Cooper, 59, sharing that the only thing keeping her father alive was life support as she reflected on her last hours with him.

"I laid in bed with him for about nine hours and that's about when everybody around us just said like 'You kinda need to pull the plug,' " she shared.

When asked by Cooper if she thought her father could feel her there, Shiffrin replied: "I would like to think so but I don't really think that he felt me. I just really appreciate that I could hold his hand and I could still feel him when there was warmth to his body and say goodbye."

The alpine skier added: "I heard his heart stop," before telling Cooper: "You talk about feeling your dad with you and that's something that I don't feel."

"I'm just wondering like, if there's a trick to be able to?" she asked the host, while tearing up.

Advertisement

Cooper's father, Wyatt Cooper, died in 1978 of surgery complications when the broadcaster was only 10, while the journalist's brother, Carter Cooper, died by suicide in 1988.

Shiffrin also told Cooper that she watched the security footage of her dad's accident in an attempt to find signs that he could have survived.

"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."

Mikaela and Jeff ShiffrinCredit: Mikaela Shiffrin/Instagram

— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

"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 to do that," admitted Shiffrin, who was 24 years old at the time of her dad's death.

The Olympian recalled a tactic that her father used when they traveled for her races. As an anesthesiologist, Shiffrin said he was a "stickler" and very aware of blood flow throughout the body.

"We don't want any blood clotting and we want to make sure that we're keeping our bodies moving," she said of what her dad would say. "He'd like, lay down on the floor, lay down on bed and he'd hold his leg and he'd just like extend his foot up into the air and down, just bend and straighten his leg."

Mikaela Shiffrin lies with her dad Jeff in the hospitalCredit: Mikaela Shiffrin/Instagram

Shiffrin recalled her dad doing a similar motion on the security footage after the accident.

She said he became unconscious again when their neighbor found him and the ambulance arrived 12 minutes later.

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”