WINTER GAMES
OLYMPICS
emphatically lived up to her prophecy with a stirring, authoritative, come-from-behind victory in the giant slalom.
Roaring down a steep and especially taxing course, Shiffrin was both the most aggressive and most technically sound skier. Despite a minor miscue in the race’s final 50 yards, her two-run time of 2:20.02 was 0.39 seconds ahead of Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway. Federica Brignone of Italy won the bronze medal.
“It’s more than another gold medal,” said Shiffrin, who joins Ted Ligety and Andrea Mead Lawrence as the only Americans to win two Alpine Olympic gold medals. “I knew I might win multiple medals at these Olympics, but I also knew I could come away with nothing. Now I know that I’ve got one.”
But by winning in the giant slalom, which is her third-best event, Shiffrin has heightened her possibilities for winning three gold medals, which is the most any Alpine skier has won in any Olympics.
But on Friday, she was unable to defend her Olympic title in what is her strongest event, the slalom.
She said she felt sick to her stomach and was “kind of puking” before her first run, in which she had the fourth-fastest time, 0.48 seconds behind leader Wendy Holdener of Switzerland. Shiffrin told NBC during a brief interview that “it almost felt like a virus” and “less about nerves.”
She rose briefly to second place after her second run but was knocked out of medal contention by subsequent skiers.
Next week, Shiffrin will be favored in the Alpine combined, the last individual Alpine race of the Pyeongchang Games. Shiffrin also indicated on Thursday that she was planning to race in a fourth event next week, the women’s downhill.
Shiffrin’s giant slalom victory completes a portion of a four-year journey to transform herself into an elite racer in every Alpine event. The giant slalom was the first of the events she had to conquer; it is a speedier and more changeable race than the slalom.
Leaving the gate in her first run Thursday morning, Shiffrin was by far the fastest in the opening segment. She lost some time in the middle of the course and rallied a bit at the end but still trailed first the round leader, Manuela Mölgg of Italy, by 0.20 seconds.
She predicted after the first run that she could go faster in the second run, and she did, especially in the first 40 seconds after she left the gate. She soon opened a lead on the field that was nearly a full second, a stunning margin.
But within sight of the finish line, she skidded slightly and was knocked off-balance. It appeared she might have given the race away.
Afterward, Shiffrin would disagree. She said she had vowed to ski without fear all the way to the end of the race.
“I was not worried that I gave it away; I had just been a bit too aggressive,” she said, smiling. “But that’s what I wanted to do.”