U.S. star Shiffrin eyes her 3rd Olympic gold
Miller: “She’s the best racer that I’ve ever seen, male or female”
Bode Miller remembers first seeing Mikaela Shiffrin ski, more than a decade ago. She was in her early teens, not yet old enough to compete at the sport’s top level; he already owned a handful of Olympic medals and a pair of World Cup overall titles.
The Americans were training at Golden Peak in Vail, Colo., and Miller was impressed by the junior across the way. Her slalom style brought to mind Vreni Schneider, a Swiss racer in the 1980s and 1990s who was a three-time Olympic champion.
“Almost like she wasn’t moving down the hill. There just wasn’t the variables that it felt like were always present in my skiing, which was this three-dimensional wobble in every direction. Seemed like she was just moving laterally, just dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dutdut-dut-dut,” Miller said, mimicking a metronome’s back-and-forth clicking. “Effortlessly staying in balance.”
Everyone in Alpine skiing keeps an eye on Shiffrin nowadays, of course, and the rest of the world will do so at the Beijing Olympics starting Monday, when she will be the defending champ in the giant slalom.
Her accomplishments at age 26 include three Olympic medals (two golds), 11 world championship medals (six golds), three World Cup overall titles and 73 career race wins (behind only Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 and Lindsey Vonn’s 82).
“I’m a huge fan,” Miller said. “She’s the best racer that I’ve ever seen, male or female.”
Why?
“She’s physically spectacular as a ski racer with strength and her general physiology. She had the right upbringing. Great support,” said Miller, whose six Olympic medals are tied for the second most in Alpine history. “She just has a lot of gifts to work with. Fortunately, she has the intangibles that partner up with those really well. Her tactical knowledge and awareness is really strong. She just doesn’t make the same errors that other people make. And that’s a function of technique, but it’s also just tactics. It’s her approach, her understanding, of how to get from Point A to Point B quickly enough to win without taking any undue risk.”
Mike Day, in his sixth season as Shiffrin’s main coach with the U.S. ski team, recalls his first chance to watch her: a slalom during a youth event at Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine.
“Prior to that, I only ever heard her name and the lore of ‘Mikaela Shiffrin,’ ” said Day, who worked for a ski company at the time.
“The race is still vivid for a couple of reasons. First, her skiing was just phenomenally high level for that age. Technical proficiency and tactical proficiency was mind-blowing. But the second reason was she won the race by 10 or 12 seconds. … I remember saying to a friend of mine on the hill that day: ‘That girl should be skiing (in the) World Cup next year, without a doubt,’ ” Day said in a video interview. “I think I was one of a million people that probably said the same thing.”
Two-time gold medalist Ted Ligety describes her slalom as “a textbook of skiing technique.”
What makes Shiffrin so successful?
“When Steph Curry shoots a 3 from just inside of half court, you’re like, ‘Oooh!’ You and I don’t know what he just did, but it looks like it’s supposed to look, and it went in,” Day said. “It’s just (being) really naturally gifted in the event, with timing and position and placement of the turn. All of those things are critical, as well as a million other elements — and she just does them all really well.”