By Julien Pretot
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Mikaela Shiffrin’s 11th-place finish in Sunday’s giant slalom at the Olympics carried none of the visible anguish that defined her Beijing 2022 campaign, the American presenting a calm perspective and renewed positivity despite already missing two medal chances in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Four years ago, she left the Games shaken and searching for answers after a series of failures under crushing expectation.
On the Olimpia delle Tofane, by contrast, Shiffrin calmly framed the result through the quality of the racing and her own long road back to form rather than disappointment at the standings, having missed out on the podium by 0.30 of a second.
“That was like the greatest show of GS skiing that we’ve had in a really long time,” she said, emphasising the depth of the field on an Olympic stage “where people actually have eyes on the sport.”
With only a few tenths separating large portions of the leaderboard, Shiffrin did not dwell on missing the podium but pointed to the progress she has made since sustaining two injuries in 2024.
“When I think about where I was last year I was like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I’ll never race again.’ So here we are in a totally different position,” the 30-year-old said. “It shows that you can fight and you can bring back the hundredths.”
She described pushing with intensity on a hill whose unusual terrain — including features and jumps rarely seen in giant slalom — encouraged aggressive skiing while compressing the standings.
The tight clustering, she suggested, reflected the discipline’s depth.
“Everybody ahead of me and even some of the girls behind me, they’re that close and that’s how high the competition level is,” she said. “I think that’s a beautiful show of our sport on an Olympic stage.”
On paper, Shiffrin is the hot favourite for Wednesday’s slalom, having won seven of the eight World Cup races in the discipline this season and already having claimed the crystal globe with 780 points out of a possible 800.
Looking ahead to the Olympic race she said she would draw lessons from her slalom run in the team combined event, which she finished fourth with Breezy Johnson after failing to master the conditions.
“With slalom, when it’s happening, that’s a tempo. It’s happening so fast that it’s just one of those things you have to start from the beginning, from the first gate, letting it run down the hill, or maybe not quite,” she explained.
“And there were a lot of turns where I was quite quick on the team combined day, and a handful where I missed. There was just a misalignment, and it was a couple of things, a combination of course setting, equipment, and conditions, and then my mentality was not matching the day.
“So I’m kind of going into it with my eyes open that we can see a very similar situation, and I will try to handle it differently in my head.”
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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