AN EARLY LOOK AT OLYMPICS: GOLDEN CHANCE FOR SHIFFRIN

American phenom Shiffrin looks to cement legacy on South Korean snow by seizing her ...

IF MIKAELA SHIFFRIN stopped right now, at age 22, she would go down as one of the best to ever step into skis.

The rest of the skiers at the Pyeongchang Olympics should be so lucky.

Already an Olympic gold medalist, already a four-time World Cup slalom champion, already a World Cup all-around champion and already more than halfway to breaking the all-time wins record that Lindsey Vonn took more than a decade to collect, Shiffrin is ready to go for more in South Korea. None other than America’s most decorated Olympic skier, Bode Miller, says Shiffrin is the best he’s ever seen.

Shortly after becoming the youngest Olympic slalom champion four years ago in Sochi, the native of Vail, Colorado, started pondering the possibility of returning four years later and winning five gold medals.

It would be a stretch, one that even she conceded felt like a dream. It would involve a very busy schedule that could include entering all five individual events and a team event that is new to the Olympics this year. And it would force her to beat out people with much more experience and guile — including Vonn, who is hungry as ever, especially after missing the 2014 Games because of an injury — in the downhill and Super-G races, which are not Shiffrin’s specialty.

What makes her Olympic journey that much more intriguing is that her best events, the slalom and giant slalom, are first on the schedule. She’ll be favored to have at least one, maybe two, of these gold medals in pocket before sitting down to decide what else she wants to try for.

‘‘It doesn’t feel like it’s something crazy that’s happening,’’ she said earlier this Winter, on the road to her 10th slalom win of the season and 41st overall for her career. ‘‘It’s not like dreaming. And that’s really cool.’’

Shiffrin is hardly the only cool kid on the mountain.

There’s a good chance 17-year-old snowboarder Chloe Kim might already have an Olympic gold medal at home had she been allowed to compete in Sochi. But she wasn’t old enough. Only fitting. The halfpipe rider will make her Olympic debut in her parents’ native country. They moved to the United States in part to help their daughter’s snowboarding career.

And, of course, no talk about the halfpipe is complete without mention of Shaun White. After a shocking fourth-place finish four years ago, White is back and promising big things in his quest for a third Olympic gold medal.

These Olympics, like all of them before, are not all fun and games. Increasing tensions between North Korea and the United States led to numerous questions about whether the U.S. would even send a team. It will. Russia, however, will not. Multiple investigations found the Russians ran a state-sponsored doping system to increase their medal count at the Olympics on home turf in Sochi four years ago. Their Olympic committee is banned and Russia will not be allowed to fly its flag any sooner than the closing ceremony. But in a compromise, dozens of Russians who can prove they are clean will be allowed in and called ‘Olympic Athlete From Russia.’’ Any medals they win will not count in Russia’s column.

That gives the United States a chance to top the medals table over its 17-day stay in South Korea. Canada, Norway and Germany will all be in that mix, as well.

Individually, Shiffrin stands as good a chance as anyone to take home the most hardware.

She has won 21 of the last 26 slalom events she has entered, but if she has grown complacent in any way, she is not showing signs of that.

“Every single one of the competitors can match,” she said. “That makes me even more motivated to keep moving forward.”