Mikaela Shiffrin’s ‘heartbreak will never go away’ as curse of Olympic title defence strikes again
The American is now the third woman in six attempts to repeat as Olympic giant slalom gold medallist while failing to finish their first run
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Not even skiing’s GOAT could escape the curse of the Olympic title defence.
The giant slalom was slated to be Mikaela Shiffrin’s golden entrance to this Games - she was meant to become the first American alpine skier to win three Olympic gold medals.
Or at least she wasn’t supposed to fall at the fifth gate of her first run.
“I won’t ever get over this,” said the 26-year-old, made to pay the price for a minuscule mistiming on the edge of her left-turning ski that caused her to ski out.
“That heartbreak never goes away and I think that’s what drives me to keep working. Sometimes they still happen and unfortunately it happened today.”
Retaining an Olympic alpine skiing title is tough.
It’s been contested at every Games since 1936 and only six have ever managed it - legends all - the likes of Alberto Tomba and Janica Kostelic.
But any such list feels incomplete without Shiffrin’s name on it, there being few statistical sound barriers on snow that the American hasn’t crashed through.
Instead, she extended an undesirable trend. Now three of the last six women to attempt to repeat as Olympic giant slalom gold medallist have failed to finish their first run.
She offered no excuses - particularly not around the snow conditions on the ‘Ice River’ piste that has been assailed by high winds. 19 of the field of 80 failed to finish the first run.
“The snow is just incredible to ski on, oh my gosh,” she said. “It’s really nice. But if you make any small errors, you can’t get away with that.
“I had the worst of it on that turn. I have been really working on the right timing on my turns and never thought that this would be the issue.
“It wasn’t because I was holding back so I can be proud of that. It doesn’t happen too often that I’m falling.”
You can say that again. Shiffrin has started a total of 229 top-level races in all disciplines and has skied out only 14 times. The last time she did so was in January 2018, just before the last Olympics.
It’s far from her last shot at gold here - with up to five further races on her programme. Next up is Wednesday’s slalom and a much-touted clash with Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova.
“My best chance for the next races is to move forward, to re-focus - and I feel like I am in a good place to do that,” said Shiffrin.
“I don’t know about the medals. I know that my skiing is good and I know even my GS skiing is good, but there we have that (today).
“So, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. I am going to do my very best to keep the right mentality and keep pushing.”
Legendary US skier Lindsey Vonn rallied behind Shiffrin, tweeting: “Proud of the way you charged @MikaelaShiffrin! Many more events to come!”
Vonn, 37, also jokingly mooted a comeback after watching Johan Clarey become the oldest alpine skiing medallist in Olympic history aged 41.
The Frenchman, who took silver in the men’s downhill, said: “I knew I only had one chance left in my career to get a medal in the Olympics.
“When you are a medallist, (whether) you are 20 or 41 it doesn’t matter, it’s just an Olympic medal. It’s already a good memory.”
Shiffrin’s partner, Norwegian speed skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, was gold medal favourite in that delayed downhill.
It was a rough day for skiing’s power couple with the 29-year-old only able to finish fifth, 0.35 seconds off the podium
“I did a hard race but it was not good enough,” he said. “Unfortunately I had some mistakes that cost me too much.”
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