Shiffrin: ‘I won’t ever get over this’
BEIJING — It was a miserable day on the mountains outside Beijing for American stars Mikaela Shiffrin and Red Gerard.
Shiffrin’s opening race ended quickly with a rare mistake and a rare Did Not Finish. Favored to defend her gold medal in the giant slalom, Shiffrin crashed a few seconds and five gates into the race. She lost control coming around a left-turn gate and fell onto her hip on a course known as The Ice River at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center.
The missed gate meant she was done early in the opening run of the twoleg event.
While Shiffrin is expected to have four more chances to add to her collection of three Olympic medals, including two golds, she said Monday’s wipeout will always stick with her.
“I won’t ever get over this,” Shiffrin said. “I’ve never gotten over any.”
Her stunning exit was her first DNF in a giant slalom in more than four years, a streak of 30 races. Her last one came three weeks before she won the gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
“That’s what drives me to try to keep working and improving, so I can try to make it (so) those things don’t happen,” she said. “But sometimes they still do happen and, unfortunately, it happened today. I felt like there was a lot to look forward to, but, well, now we need to reset.”
Shiffrin plans to race again Wednesday in the slalom, which she won as an 18-year-old at the 2014 Sochi Games. It’ll be her next chance to become the first Alpine ski racer from the United States to win three Olympic golds across a career.
On the slopestyle course, Gerard not only failed to defend his gold medal, but he was knocked off the podium entirely. A run by Canadian rival Mark McMorris dropped Gerard into fourth.
“There’s nothing you can really complain about and I don’t want to be a judge or anything,” Gerard said. “There were a lot of landed runs out there, and it’s hard. But yeah, I would’ve liked to have been up there for sure.”