New U.S. star Shiffrin stellar en route to gold
Becomes youngest slalom champion in Olympic history
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Mikaela Shiffrin, the 18-year-old wunderkind of ski racing, is a product of a countercultural movement in U.S. youth sports, an initiative of parents who encourage their children to focus on the process of athletic achievement instead of its results. In theory, both the journey and the destination are enhanced.
Shiffrin, the most precocious ski racer the United States has seen, believed and preached the doctrine, even as she became the youngest slalom world champion a year ago.
Then, on Friday, Shiffrin skied to a commanding lead at the halfway point of the women’s Olympic slalom competition. The gold medal was hers to lose. Riding the chair lift for the second run that would complete her coronation as ski racing’s newest queen, Shiffrin started to cry.
“I might actually be an Olympic champion,” she gasped.
Minutes later, roaring down the race course, she could not get the gold medal out of her mind. Shiffrin was on the verge of crashing, one ski airborne, her arms flailing.
Her coach was sure the race was lost. Her mother wondered if she would have a heart attack. The racer relied on the process.
“I’ve made that recovery in practice a hundred times, if not more,” Shiffrin said later. “So I said, ‘You know what to do — charge back into the course.’ ”
About 25 rapid and nearly flawless turns later, Shiffrin sped past the finish line to become the youngest Olympic slalom champion in history. She is also the first American to win the event in 42 years.
“You can create your own miracle,” Shiffrin said with the gold medal on a sash draped around her neck. “But you do it by never looking past all the little steps along the way.”
Shiffrin’s winning time of 1 minute, 44.54 seconds was 53-hundredths of a second better than her childhood idol, Marlies Schild of Austria, who claimed the silver medal. Schild’s teammate Kathrin Zettel earned the bronze medal.
In skiing circles, Shiffrin has been considered a prodigy — and called “the Mozart of ski racing” — since she was 12. Lately, she has been called the “next Lindsey Vonn,” a reference to the U.S. Olympic champion of four years ago who sat out the Sochi Games with a knee injury. If Friday was a passing of the torch, it will be no surprise to most of the worldwide ski community.
“Mikaela is going to win many, many races. I’m sure this is only the beginning,” said Maria Hofl-Riesch, the defending Olympic slalom champion who finished a whopping 1.19 seconds behind Shiffrin Friday. “She is a tremendous skier for someone so very young and very mentally tough.”
It was all on display on her sport’s biggest stage. Even in the usually antsy hours before her race, Shiffrin was at ease.
She might have waited all her life for this race, but her day began as usual. She ate breakfast with her parents, then briefly wandered the U.S. ski team’s hotel, where there are multiple common areas for the athletes to gather and connect.
Then Shiffrin, renowned for being able to snooze at midday anywhere, took a nap. At her first major junior championship, she had to be awakened minutes before what became a record-setting run.
Friday, it was the Winter Olympics. Shiffrin slept.
Perhaps that is why she looked so at peace several hours later as she pushed out of the gate for the first run, which she dominated, taking nearly a half-second lead in an event often decided by hundredths of a second.
Shiffrin led the field at every timed interval down the race course, which drops about 600 feet top to bottom.