Mikaela Shiffrin did not hesitate when asked about her most important possession.
“Probably my bed,” she said. “Is that weird?”
The 2014 Olympic slalom champion sleeps a lot. She goes to bed at 9 p.m., and wakes up around 10 hours later at 7 a.m. Impressive, considering a 2013 Gallop poll found that just 5 percent of Americans sleep nine hours or more per night.
She also supplements her nightly slumber with a daily nap.
“Rest is big for me,” Shiffrin said to Savannah Guthrie on “TODAY,” while also joking that if there were a gold medal for napping, “probably I would win it.”
Shiffrin is so diligent about her daily nap that teammates caller her “Sir Naps A Lot.”
During an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Shiffrin admitted that she occasionally falls asleep on ski lifts. One time she failed to wake up at the top, and had to ride down the mountain while still sitting on the ski lift.
Shiffrin even clinched the 2017 World Cup overall title while napping. When she woke up, she found out that she had mathematically clinched the title because her closest rival, Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia, withdrew a race.
“I woke up from a nap, and my mom was like, ‘Hey, congrats,’” Shiffrin said. “Sweet, [but] I didn’t really do anything.”