Can skier Mikaela Shiffrin capture America’s hearts along with some gold medals?
U.S. skier Shiffrin eyes return to star form after some pre-Games slip-ups
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA >> Mikaela Shiffrin had been floating through a powdery world like a happy-go-lucky figurine inside a snow globe. Ski racing had come so easily the Colorado woman brushed aside prevailing laws of gravity.
Newton and his theories could join Dante in hell. Few could get down a slalom run faster. Nothing seemed to change when Shiffrin added speed races to her ambitious pursuit.
At first.
Then without the slightest ringing of alarm bells, just weeks before the Pyeongchang Games, the graced-by-Olympic gods Shiffrin looked human.
In a stunning plot twist, she skied out of bounds just before the finish line two weeks ago after holding a one-second lead in a slalom race in Switzerland. Shiffrin would have clinched a fifth slalom World Cup title without the mistake.
“That’s when the red lights are flashing,” she said Saturday. “That’s when I need to change something.”
A skier with 10 World Cup victories this season makes her 2018 Winter Games debut Monday (Sunday night, Pacific time) in the giant slalom at the Jeongseon Alpine Centre, hoping she has regained her poise.
The 5-foot-7 skier with a radiant personality has the chance to capture American hearts as one of the Winter Games’ breakout stars. After becoming an Olympic slalom champion at 18, Shiffrin has taken over the mantel well stocked by Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso with three World Championship gold medals and the 2017 overall World Cup title.
Despite the recent issues, Shiffrin has a chance to defend her overall World Cup crown while leading the slalom rankings, third in giant slalom and fifth in the downhill this season. Most impressive, she reached the podium in 10 consecutive races by winning all but one of them. But ...
“I’m not sure where to start exactly,” she said.
Yes, she does. Shiffrin knows the source of the recent detour. It began before the slalom stunner Jan. 28. Go back a week
earlier to a World Cup downhill in Cortina, Italy. Shiffrin, 22, finished third on the first day to follow up a victory earlier in the season at Lake Louise, Canada.
This speed stuff seemed way too easy.
“I started thinking, ‘Oh, maybe all that experience that everyone talks about isn’t that important,’ ’’ Shiffrin recalled.
The next day she placed seventh in the same race. Suddenly it wasn’t as easy as it had seemed 24 hours earlier. All the training runs, mentally taxing course preparation and skiing hard finally had taken a toll. By the time she was done a week later at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, reality slammed into her like an avalanche.
The prescription? Shiffrin, who also was seventh in a giant slalom in Switzerland, needed rest.
“I get annoying to my coaches,” she of coming unglued because of mental exhaustion. “I’m not fun to be around. All those things that are part of who I am kind of disappear.”
The sunshine was back on display under the bright television lights at her news conference Saturday morning.
“Hey guys, how are you? Just wanted to say hey,” she addressed reporters, most of whom Shiffrin didn’t know.
U.S. alpine racers aren’t used to big media turnouts while spending most of the year at World Cup events in Europe. The added attention for stars such as Shiffrin is part of the Olympic experience.
Now it appears the skier has made the right adjustments to regain her poise to bolster the narrative that she’s ready for prime-time.
Shiffrin plans to also ski the slalom Wednesday but could add the super-G on Saturday, the downhill (Feb. 21) and the combined (Feb. 23).
“In Sochi, I thought no way I will ever be able to do that,” she said. “It’s too much. I don’t have enough experience. I’m not a good enough skier. I’m going to be a slalom skier forever.”
Since then she has won World Cup races across five disciplines, leading some experts to say Shiffrin has the chance to be the greatest ever.
Those chapters will have wait. With 41 World Cup victories, Shiffrin has a lot of skiing to do before she can equal fellow Vail, Colo., star Vonn. The downhill sensation has a women’s record 81 victories — and counting — on the circuit.
“I would like to compete in everything,” Shiffrin said. “I’m not sure how I would have the energy to do that.”
Shiffrin and U.S. coaches will decide how ready the skier is to handle the speed events after she completes her specialties.
“I care, I want to medal,” she said. “I want to medal in multiple disciplines.”
Give her street cred for honesty in an age of unaffected nonchalance. She’s still excited about the gold medallion from the Sochi Games. It’s a shiny reminder of the effort it takes to touch excellence.
“The medal itself without all of that would mean nothing,” Shiffrin said.
The skier has hung some of her World Championship medals on previously bare walls in her room. They look pretty, she said.
Shiffrin’s Olympic treasure, though, is squirreled away inside a pair of socks for safekeeping. She isn’t revealing where.
But Shiffrin might be looking to invest in more footwear in the near future.