Shiffrin gets silver in Vonn’s last Olympic race; Gisin wins

JEONGSEON, South Korea — Mikaela Shiffrin already was assured of earning her third career medal, each in a different event, when Lindsey Vonn prepared to propel herself out of the starting gate as the final starter in the final race of her Olympic career.

This slalom portion of the two-leg Alpine combined would be the first — and only — time Vonn, 33, and U.S. teammate Shiffrin, 22, would compete against each other at any Olympics. Could Vonn possibly summon a “miracle,” as she called it, a slalom performance from somewhere in her past to make a lead from the downhill portion stand up? Could Shiffrin hold onto her silver?

With the snow carefully descending under the artificial lights lining the course, the drama quickly dimmed. Vonn’s slalom lasted all of about 10 seconds before she went off-course, leaving Shiffrin in second place Thursday between two women from Switzerland: gold medalist Michelle Gisin and bronze medalist Wendy Holdener.

Gisin, whose older sister Dominique tied for first in the 2014 Olympic downhill, produced a total time of 2 minutes, 20.90 seconds that was 0.97 seconds better than Shiffrin’s. Holdener was nearly 1½ second off Gisin’s pace, turning in the fastest slalom after standing 10th after the downhill.

Shiffrin ranked sixth in the downhill, 1.21 seconds slower than Gisin, and wasn’t able to make up that large a deficit in her forte, the slalom, which was a much shorter track. The downhill took about 100 seconds; the slalom about 40.

“Clearly,” said Shiffrin’s coach, Mike Day, “the downhill didn’t go quite to plan.”

Still, Shiffrin added the combined silver to her giant slalom gold from a week earlier, giving her two medals — plus a surprisingly low fourth-place finish in the slalom — in three races. She arrived in South Korea to chatter about entering five, but after a series of weather-related schedule changes, wound up dropping two.

“It’s really nice to be at the end of it,” she said, “and know that I do have two medals.”

With her slalom gold from the 2014 Games, Shiffrin joins Bode Miller and Julia Mancuso as the only Americans with a medal in each of at least three Alpine disciplines.