Anxious Shiffrin misses on medal
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Mikaela Shiffrin is, without a doubt, the best women’s slalom skier. Has been for years. All of the victories confirm it. Her competitors are aware of it.
And, yes, so is she.
“This is going to sound so arrogant,” Shiffrin said Friday at the Winter Olympics, her eyes closed. “I know that I’m the best slalom skier in the world.”
She spoke those words after failing to live up to that billing. After, as she put it, “puking before the first run” because of what she initially thought might be food poisoning or a virus but eventually decided was simply anxiousness. After, she acknowledged, skiing too conservatively to put up a proper bid to repeat as Oympic champion in the event and finishing fourth behind gold medalist Frida Hansdotter of Sweden.
“Sometimes,” the 22-year-old American said, “I feel like the only one who can beat myself in slalom is me. And I beat myself … today.”
Hansdotter took advantage, putting together two legs with a combined time of 1 minute, 38.63 seconds for her first Olympic medal. Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener was 0.05 seconds back for the silver, followed by Austria’s Katharina Gallhuber.
“A lot of surprises today,” Holdener said.
Not in the men’s race across the way at the Jeongseon Alpine Center, where Austria’s Matthias Mayer added a super-G gold to the downhill title he won four years ago. This time, Mayer edged Switzerland’s Beat Feuz and Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud.
The biggest news 30 miles away at the Yongpyong Alpine Center was not who won the medals but who didn’t. Shiffrin finished in 1:39.03 — 0.08 away from the bronze and less than a half-second from the gold.
That the subpar performance in slalom — by her standard — came one day after she won gold in the giant slalom, an event at which she is not as skilled, was not only stunning but also perhaps related.
After attending the medal ceremony Thursday night, Shiffrin said, she didn’t get to bed until around 10 p.m., roughly 1 1/2 hours later than what has been normal for her during the Pyeongchang Games. More influential than that, she thought, was the inability to properly modulate her emotions after that victory in the opening women’s Alpine event.
“I had too much of a peak yesterday and too much of a
valley today. And when you have two races in a row, it’s really important to keep that mental energy stable. And I didn’t really do that,” Shiffrin said. “So today, it was like all of the tools that I have that make me feel equipped to handle whatever pressure I feel, I didn’t have anymore.”
Her whole Olympics are shifting now. Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen, who also coaches Mikaela, had already said today’s super-G
was no longer part of the plan. Shiffrin said she might not ski the downhill, either, for what would shape up as a showdown against U.S. teammate Lindsey Vonn, the 2010 gold medalist in that event. Shiffrin did say she definitely will remain part of the field for the combined.
There is pressure galore, from others and from within. That is based in large part on her résumé: She won the slalom gold at the age of 18 at the 2014 Sochi Games; she won three consecutive world championships in that event; she had a five-race winning streak in January; she is on pace for a second overall World Cup title.
“I think it’s more my own expectations and knowing the magnitude of what I’m trying to do,” Shiffrin said. “Less about what everybody else wants to see.”
That might be. It’s why she says she would vomit before races last season. And it’s what she thinks caused her to get sick Friday.
Now Shiffrin gets a few days to recalibrate. But it won’t be easy to forget what happened Friday.
“Moving forward? I am terrible at that. Every single, like, loss that I’ve ever had, I remember that feeling so thoroughly. It’s like a piece of my heart breaks off and I can never get it back,” she said. “And today is no different than that.”
“Some day I’ll be able to understand that it’s part of life and I’m just learning.”