Mikaela Shiffrin will not forget what happened on Monday in her first race of the Beijing Olympics as she crashes out of the giant slalom.
The American, who is currently top of the overall World Cup standings, was bidding to win gold again in the giant slalom but she was unable to complete her first run. The defending Olympic champion could not get to grips with the snow at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Centre and has registered her first DNF since Kronplatz in 2018.
Expected to contend for multiple medals at the Beijing Olympics, several of them gold, Shiffrin lost an edge on the fifth gate of the first run of the women’s giant slalom and skied out. It’s the first time she’s failed to finish a GS race since January 2018.
“It’s a huge disappointment. Not even counting the medals,” Shiffrin said afterward. “The easiest thing to say is I skied a couple of good turns and skied one turn a bit wrong and really paid the hardest of consequences for that.”
“I won’t ever get over this,” Mikaela Shiffrin said Monday, her voice steady, after slowly making her way to the bottom of a course known as The Ice River at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center. “I’ve never gotten over any.”
That’s what happens when an athlete is as successful as Shiffrin, a 26-year-old American who owns three Winter Games medals — including a pair of golds — three World Cup overall titles and six world championships. The misses stand out.
She spoke about “how much it hurt” and how “heartbreaking” it was when she failed to complete a giant slalom on Jan. 23, 2018, in the Kronplatz World Cup stop at San Vigilio di Marebbe, Italy — the last time she didn’t complete a GS, which came three weeks before she won the gold at the Pyeongchang Games. She mentioned, too, a slalom mistake before those Olympics. And a flub six years ago in another race.
