ROCKY RIDE FOR SHIFFRIN
Gold medal hopeful finishes with 0 medals, 3 DNFs in 5 races
BEIJING — There was simply no way to predict this. Not for anyone, including Mikaela Shiffrin.
That the American skier would go 0-for-5 in individual races at the Beijing Olympics, leaving without a medal from any and with a best showing of ninth place, was hard enough to imagine beforehand.
That she would not even manage to finish three of those events — the three that are her best, including Thursday’s Alpine combined — was among the most surprising developments of the entire 2022 Games.
“I’m certainly questioning a lot,” Shiffrin said. “I’m really disappointed. And I’m really frustrated.”
She arrived in China as one of the biggest stars of ski racing — or any sport. Owner of three Olympic medals, two golds and a silver. Six world championship golds. Three overall World Cup titles.
Still, the 26-year-old from Colorado just never displayed her enviable technique and talent or big-moment gumption at the National Alpine Skiing Center in the brown, craggy mountains of Yanqing zone about 55 miles northwest of central Beijing.
“This is incredibly difficult for her as a person,” U.S. head women’s Alpine coach Paul Kristofic said. “We had big expectations coming here, and it hasn’t gone the way we hoped, of course.”
Shiffrin spoke openly and at length in the months leading up to these races about those enormous expectations — from herself, from fans, from coaches, even close friends and family. She also was frank about the lingering heartache from the accidental death of
her father two years ago.
On Thursday, she acknowledged maybe she was pushing too hard and not leaving herself enough margin for error in the tick-tocktick-tock, left-right rhythm of a slalom, but otherwise was not sure of any common denominator for the miscues.
“The pressure’s there. It’s always there. And I don’t feel uncomfortable or even unfamiliar with it,” she said, not far from where Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin received her second consecutive combined gold
medal. “Some days I’m a little bit more tight and it’s still possible to ski well. And some days I’m a little looser and it’s still possible to ski well.”
Shiffrin’s latest subpar performance came in the second leg of the combined, which adds the times from one downhill run and one slalom run.
She was fifth-fastest in the downhill, certainly in contention for a higher finish, perhaps even a gold. What she needed to do, and could not, was stay upright for 50
seconds or so — long enough get to the bottom of the slope as a light snow descended.
Trouble came after about 10 gates and 10 seconds. She lost her balance, could not regain it, and ended up landing on her hip.
Shiffrin sat for a few moments in the snow. When she rose, she shook her head, then looked up at the hill, as though trying to figure out exactly where things went wrong.
Later, course reports — sent to Americans who raced after
Shiffrin — warned of a rut on the slope that might have been what caused Thursday’s issue.
That was among several things she mentioned in discussing factors that could have contributed to what went wrong along the way over the last 1 ½ weeks: the logistical challenges of an Olympics amid a pandemic; a late-December bout of COVID-19 that kept her off her skis for 10 days; icy, manufactured snow that several racers found different from what they’re used to in Europe.