When gold and silver aren’t enough
American Shiffrin finishes her Olympics on the podium
BUKPYEONG — In so many ways, the final day of Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympics came to embody all the days and all the emotions that preceded it. Frustration sharing a stage with joy. Beauty marred by tiny blemishes. Results that didn’t necessarily match the goals but are certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
Shiffrin showed no outward signs of disappointment Thursday afternoon. She had come to Pyeongchang with the hopes of winning multiple medals, and she did. A gold in the giant slalom and now a silver in the combined event means Shiffrin has three Olympic medals in her career, more than anyone not named Bode Miller, Julia Mancuso or Lindsey Vonn — all royalty in the U.S. alpine world. And Shiffrin’s all of 22 years old.
“To come away from this Olympics with two medals is insane,” Shiffrin said.
A gold and a silver — paired with a fourth-place finish in her best event — were not exactly what she’d spent the past four years dreaming about. She had discussed openly the possibility of winning three or four — or who knows, maybe five? — medals in Pyeongchang, and as she grew faster and faster in every single discipline, no one was eager to rule her out.
“For sure, the expectations were high. But when I came here, I was thinking more about my own expectations,” she said Thursday when it was all finished.
The gap between what was possible and what was probable might as well have been the distance from the top of the mountain to the bottom. Sure, Shiffrin had shown great promise in multiple disciplines this year, but coming to Pyeongchang, she somehow needed to find that magic and deploy it on a nearly daily basis here.
Instead, these Olympics featured just flashes of her brilliance — brilliant, bright flashes — enough for two impressive events, but not the stack of medals she might’ve envisioned.
Shiffrin will resume her World Cup season, where she’s big favourite for the both her second straight overall title and fourth consecutive slalom title.
“Just knowing that I can put fast times down in pretty much any event, that is really huge for me,” she said. “In Sochi, I felt like, ‘Ah, I’m just like a little slalom skier.’ ... At that point, yeah, I talked about winning five golds, and it was more just the idea of improving my skiing enough in all events that I could contend for multiple medals.
“So to be in this position now is incredibly sweet. Moving forward, I know what to do to get better.”