"Her last chance in Cortina, and maybe the last in her career as an Olympian, was the women's slalom. Calling the slalom Shiffrin's specialty is like saying Beethoven knows his way around the piano. Mikaela Shiffrin defines this event. Going into the Olympics, she'd won seven of eight World Cup slaloms this year. And yet, as she entered the start gate, any outcome felt possible."
"The race-in, race-out grind of the World Cup circuit is the best way to gauge a skier's skill level; over the course of countless races, the cream inevitably rises to the top. The Olympics are just a few runs once every four years. The snow can shift. The long layoffs between events can take a toll. The pressure can weigh you down."
"Shiffrin's repeated mistakes in Beijing and in her first two events in Cortina; Simone Biles' "twisties" in Tokyo; Ilia Malinin's meltdown just a few days ago; American Olympics watchers have seen, over and over, what it looks like for the best in the world to look helpless on their sport's biggest stage. And more than almost any athlete aside from Biles, who Shiffrin spoke with recently about their shared struggles, the American skiing star has externalized her internal struggles with expectations and fear."
Mikaela Shiffrin won Olympic slalom gold in 2014 at 18 and earned the Skieur d'Or in 2017. She won giant slalom gold and combined silver at the 2018 Olympics and now holds the most World Cup wins of any Alpine skier at age 30. Before Wednesday she had not won another Olympic medal in the last two Winter Games. The women's slalom in Cortina represented a possible final Olympic chance. Slalom is Shiffrin's defining event; she had won seven of eight World Cup slaloms that season. The World Cup's relentless grind proves skill over time, while the Olympics can be affected by snow, layoffs and pressure.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]