Mikaela Shiffrin’s fourth-place finish is surprising — but not disappointing

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The shrug said it all. It came at the bottom of a ski hill here, a ski hill set with a slalom course that she would be expected to own. Friday morning, Mikaela Shiffrin awoke as a newly minted gold medalist, sobs and squeals of satisfaction behind her. Friday afternoon, with her signature event just finished, she raised her shoulders at the Yongpyong Alpine Centre, saying to everyone assembled, “What more could I have done?”

What more could she do now? In a span of 24 hours, Shiffrin took the PyeongChang Olympics by the throat by winning gold in the giant slalom, a discipline in which she is typically excellent. But she is transcendent in the slalom, and may go down as the best ever in that event — a gold medalist at age 18, already with the third-most slalom victories in World Cup history — and she’s not yet 23.

Thursday, after the giant slalom, she said ominously, “Now, we got the ball rolling.”

Friday, unexpectedly, the ball stopped. She finished four-tenths of a second from gold. She finished eight-hundredths of a second from bronze.


That is her superiority in slalom. In Shiffrin’s mind, Frida Hansdotter of Sweden, Wendy Holdener of Switzerland and Katharina Gallhuber of Austria didn’t beat her for medals. Shiffrin beat herself.

“Just nerves,” she said. “Yeah.”

It’s an odd thing at the Olympics when favorites lose. Ski racing happens on snow and in wind. It’s primary characteristic may be unpredictability. It is Shiffrin, in recent years, who has caused us to think otherwise. It is Shiffrin who can get so nervous before a run that she throws up — which she did before the first run Friday — and still win. Or lose.

Step back a bit for a second: The gold from Thursday means Shiffrin’s trip to PyeongChang can hardly be considered a disappointment. She is 22. She owns two gold medals. There’s a legitimate way to wonder what’s not to like?

“Going into this Olympics, I thought, ‘Yeah, I could come away with multiple medals. I could also walk away with nothing,’” Shiffrin said after the giant slalom. “And now I know that I have something, so that’s a really nice feeling.”

Multiple medals are still possible, because after skipping Saturday’s super-G to get some much-needed rest — and we’ll get to that — Shiffrin could ski the downhill and the combined — which, quite intuitively, adds the times from one run of downhill and one run of slalom. She could medal in either or both. She could finish off the podium in either or both. It’s why we stay tuned.

But Friday shows why we tune in, too. Shiffrin and the slalom are the most reliable combination in Alpine racing. There have been seven slalom races staged on the World Cup circuit this season. Her finishes: 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 and a did-not-finish that came when she lost her balance three gates from the end — holding a lead of about one second. Thursday, she said she had a “love-hate relationship” with giant slalom. All her life, she has had a love-love relationship with slalom.

Source: Washingtonpost News