It’s a slippery slope.
Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin dropped the F-bomb on live TV during an interview with the “Today” show Thursday from Milan, Italy.
The Olympic skier, who took home the gold medal in women’s slalom Wednesday, said since her father Jeff’s sudden death in 2020, she’s been on a “spiritual journey.”
She then accidentally said the F-word before quipping. “S–t!” and quickly covering her mouth with her hand and stating: “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
“Today” hosts Carson Daly, Hoda Kotb and Craig Melvin were unfazed by the moment, with Kotb telling the athlete, “We got you!”
“We’ll pay the fine,” she noted about the FCC Broadcasting rules.
Melvin added: “We know what you meant. We know what you meant. You’re wearing gold! It’s OK. It’s OK,” before stating about Shiffrin. “She’s just like us!”
“Oh my God, that’s so bad,” the Olympian mused.
While on air, Shiffrin, 30, said her teammates were pushing her to drink espresso martinis the night after she won gold.
“Everyone kept handing me espresso martinis because I said it was my destiny to have one last night,” she recounted. “So everyone kept bringing them to me, but then they would also say — which may be some of the reason for the swearing, so sorry again — but no, they just kept handing them to me. They’re like, ‘But pace yourself. Here’s another but pace yourself.’ ”
“If it was possible to love you even more than we already did, today’s the day!” Kotb told the skier.
Daly, meanwhile, took a moment to reflect on Shiffrin’s slip-up after she signed off.
The anchor, who lost both his mom and dad in 2017, explained: “It’s not a canned answer. You know, she’s talking about her father. She’s moved in the moment. It happens.”
Al Roker teased, “I always thought that was gonna be me.”
Shiffrin’s dad Jeff died unexpectedly after suffering head trauma at 65 years old in 2020.
“He was doing something on the roof and somehow, he fell off and hit his head,” his wife Eileen shared in an Adidas video at the time. “Mikaela laid with her head on his chest for nine hours. We ended up having to withdraw support, and she heard his heart stop beating, so that’s a hard thing to go through.”
She added, “We lost our rock — the person that we all loved the most.”
Shiffrin took home the gold at the Milan Cortina Games eight years after she won her last medal.
She has now become the first US skier to win three Olympic gold medals. Shiffrin first nabbed the medal in Sochi in 2014 for the same event before taking home the giant slalom gold in 2018 in Pyeongchang.
Shiffrin took to Instagram to pen a heartfelt message about her victory.
“I won! I got there, in the face of fear and adrenaline and the potential for criticism and backlash from people who know nothing and don’t even try to understand. I stood in the start gate, and looked out at the mountain and the course ahead and my heartbeat nearly fell out of my butt. Still, when the countdown started, I pushed. I pushed to chase, I pushed to earn. I pushed to dare and to dream. I pushed to believe.”
Shiffrin added that she “questioned my toughness and tenacity. I questioned it all. And then I left those questions behind, and stepped into the arena anyway.”
“I won. I f–king won. This, right here, is the lottery and I won,” she concluded. “Oh, and I got a medal too.”
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