Shiffrin golden again
Racer fights off illness to win fourth straight slalom title
Not even a chest cold that left her doubled over in the finish area, then sitting in the snow gasping for air and coughing, could stop Mikaela Shiffrin’s quest for another historic achievement on Saturday.
With an inspiring comeback in the second run, the Eaglevail racer overcame severe chest congestion and rebounded from a third-place clocking in the first run to become the first alpine skier to win four straight world titles in the same discipline, claiming slalom gold at the world alpine championships in Are, Sweden.
It was her third medal at these world championships, following gold in super-g and bronze in giant slalom. Her fifth career world championships gold tied her for the U.S. record with Ted Ligety, and she tied the U.S. record for most gold medals at a single world championships (two) with Lindsey Vonn (2009) and Andrea Mead Lawrence (1952).
But it wasn’t easy. Shiffrin appeared sluggish in the first run and went into the second run 0.15 of a second off the pace set by first-run leader Wendy Holdener of Switzerland. Normally that wouldn’t be a significant deficit for Shiffrin to overcome in slalom, but with difficulty breathing, the challenge was daunting.
She looked more lively in the second run, though, and put pressure on Holdener with a blazing sprint that gave her a lead of 0.58 of a second over Sweden’s Anna Swenn Larsson, who ultimately claimed the silver. Skiing last, Holdener had no choice but to charge if she wanted to stay ahead of Shiffrin, and she skied past a gate 10 seconds into her run, hiking to make the gate but finishing more than five seconds behind.
“It’s been a wild day,” a tearful Shiffrin told NBCSN’S Andrea Joyce in the finish area, her voice quavering. “I knew I had to fight really hard the second run because Anna and Wendy are both so strong and the girls who were behind me were also really close. It was really tight. I just figured, ‘I have to be tough and try, and I just need 60 seconds to push. I can do that for 60 seconds.’ “
In fact Shiffrin’s mother Eileen, who helps U.S. Ski Team coaches mentor her daughter, gave her the option to drop out of the race.
“My mom said before the second run, ‘You don’t have to do this,’ because I was coughing so hard that my stomach was like into spasm,” Shiffrin told Joyce. “Then I couldn’t breathe, and I kept coughing more. At what point do you say, ‘No, I can’t do 60 seconds of skiing?’ I’m out here, I want to do it. Whether I win or not, I just wanted to try. When she said, ‘You don’t have to,’ then I was sure that I wanted to.”
Adding poignancy to the day, Shiffrin got to share her moment with Emma Lundell, a Swedish teenager she met at Are the day she claimed her first World Cup win in 2012. Lundell then was an 11-year-old leukemia patient. They have been friends since.
“It’s emotional, because here I am like, ‘Oh, I’m sick,’ and she was really sick,” Shiffrin said. “She’s always the reality check for me. It’s amazing to share this with her.”