Shiffrin wound up beating herself
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Mikaela Shiffrin has stood in the start gate hundreds, maybe thousands of times, staring down the mountain and knowing it will bend to her will.
That’s not arrogance or wishful thinking. It’s fact. She’s the best slalom skier of her generation, maybe any generation, and might well end her career as the best skier of all time. When she’s skiing well, everyone else is skiing for second and third place and they all know it.
And then there are days when she stands atop the mountain with her stomach churning and her mind jumbled, wondering if it will be enough. More often than not, it still is.
But on this day, of all days, it wasn’t. Instead of winning her signature event, the slalom, for her second gold of the Pyeongchang Olympics, Shiffrin didn’t even make the podium Friday. She missed the bronze medal by 0.08 of a second, done in by a tentative first run.
“I didn’t feel like I was up for the challenge,” she said. “Actually I did. But when I was actually skiing my runs, that didn’t come, out and that’s a very big disappointment.”
A very big surprise, as well. There was thought before the Olympics that Shiffrin just might do the impossible and win five gold medals. It was mostly hype, sure, but she’s adapted so well to the speed events that the prospect wasn’t completely outlandish.
When she won gold in the giant slalom Thursday, she seemed poised for a haul of heavy medals. Not five golds, because she’s skipping Saturday’s super-G. But three, possibly, maybe even four.
Two, for sure.
Of Shiffrin’s 41 World Cup victories, 30 have been in slalom. She’s won four season titles in the discipline, and four years ago became the youngest Olympic champion in slalom. This gold should have been as big a gimme as anything.
“This is going to sound so arrogant,” Shiffrin said, pausing briefly before plowing ahead. “I know that I’m the best slalom skier in the world because I’ve done that skiing so much. And what I did in the race today was not even anywhere close to that. Even anywhere close to what I was doing with my free skiing.
“But,” she said, “the race is when it counts.”
And for reasons that will bedevil her long after these Games are over, she couldn’t deliver.
“I was almost trying to do something special. I don’t need to do something special,” Shiffrin said, her voice rising in exasperation. “I just need to ski like myself, and it would be fine.”
Shiffrin swears she isn’t bothered by the considerable expectations on her, that no one can expect more of her than she does of herself. But whether it is a fear of disappointing people or a fear of disappointing herself, managing her nerves has become as big a challenge as managing a course.
Just as she did often last season, Shiffrin threw up before her first run Friday. She tried to tell herself it was a virus but, deep down, she knew better. She tried to tell herself it would be fine, that her experiences last season had prepared her to ski through it.
But when she got on the course, she was holding back.
Shiffrin is a sight to behold when she’s at her best, a breathtaking combination of ferocity and smoothness. She looks different, as if she’s skiing in glorious technicolor while everyone else is in black and white.
On Friday, though, she looked sluggish to the eye, a fact soon confirmed by the timing clock. She finished the first run in fourth place, .48 seconds off the lead.
She was much better on the second run, but her medal chances were doomed when she got too wide on a turn between the second and third intermediates.
“When (I got sick) I thought, `Huh. OK, well, I’ve dealt with this before, I’m fine,’ ” Shiffrin said. “But when I ended up skiing the course, I skied it really, really conservative, and that’s just not something that deserves to win a medal.”
While the world will focus on her placement, that isn’t what will eat at Shiffrin. She’s raced four times at the Olympics and has two gold medals to show for it. Her legacy is secure.
No, what bothers her is knowing she could have beaten the mountain, just as she’s done so many times before.
Instead, she beat herself.