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Mikaela Shiffrin Takes Last Shot At Olympic Redemption — And Nails It
Mikaela Shiffrin obliterated her haunted Winter Olympics past on Wednesday in the women’s slalom.
The U.S. ski great won the gold medal in dominating style, finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor.
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It was her last race at the Milan Cortina Games after she resumed her Olympics slump in Italy in her first two events.
But this time she completed a Simone Biles-style comeback on snow. Biles was a gold medal winning gymnast and queen of her sport before mental health struggles dogged her in the next Games. But that set up a glorious return at Paris where she won the gold in the all-around.
Shiffrin, who has talked about her own struggles, returned to the top of her sport on the most important stage.
Camille Rast of Switzerland took silver and Anna Svenn Larsson of Sweden got bronze.
Shiffrin began the day in a blaze of optimism.
In the first run she recorded a time of 47.13 seconds, a sizable 0.82 of a second faster than the rest of the field.
“I had a little bit of butterflies for sure, that’s just going to be part of this day, but I feel pretty prepared to take on the nervousness and it’s just about doing my skiing,” she told NBC after the initial run.
Earlier this week, she showed small signs of a return to form in the Olympic giant slalom, finishing 11th. “I think today was a really great practice for a strong, flexible mentality, which is what I want to feel in the coming days as well,” she said, even if her time was 0.92 seconds off the lead.
In her first event of the Games, she still appeared to be dragging the weight of her disastrous performance in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where she failed to finish three of her six events and didn’t medal in any.
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Downhill gold medalist Breezy Johnson staked her to a lead in the women’s team combined event at these Games but the tension-filled Shiffrin’s slalom run sunk them into fourth place.
Slalom, however, historically is her best event. She won her first Olympic gold in slalom in 2014, and 71 of her record 108 World Cup victories are in that discipline.
“I don’t want Beijing to be the reason that I’m scared of the Olympics,” the three-time medalist told Olympics.com.
