Mikaela Pauline Shiffrin is an American two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and World Cup alpine skier. She is a three-time Overall World Cup champion, a four-time world champion in slalom, and a six-time winner of the World Cup discipline title in that event.
Mikaela Shiffrin: Team event| Did win a medal| Combined event
Team event:
Mikaela Shiffrin will travel home empty-handed from the Beijing Winter Games after the United States missed the podium by 0.42 seconds in the mixed team parallel on Sunday afternoon.
The 26-year-old American star, the headline attraction of a US team including River Radamus, Paula Moltzan and Tommy Ford, came tantalizingly close to a redemptive bronze after defeating a Slovakia team without star Petra Vlhova in their opening tie before upsetting Italy to reach the medal round.
Did win a medal:
The knockout competition represented Shiffrin’s last chance at a medal after she finished no better than ninth in five individual races while failing to cross the finish line entirely in three of them, an outcome that would have been unthinkable a fortnight ago when the three-time overall World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist arrived with designs on Janica Kostelic’s women’s record of four medals at a single Winter Games.
“I am not disappointed,” Shiffrin said. “I have had a lot of disappointing moments at these Games. Today is not one of them – today is my favourite memory.
“This was the best possible way that I could imagine ending the Games, skiing with such strong teammates.”
Combined Event:
“Twenty-four hours makes a really big difference when I think about my individual goals, my personal goals, for the rest of the season,” said Shiffrin, who narrowly leads Vlhova atop the leaderboard in pursuit of her fourth overall World Cup crystal globe.
“There was absolutely some thought that the 24 hours makes a difference to be still pushing and using that energy. I decided to stay because I wanted to compete with my teammates. I couldn’t possibly imagine leaving. There’s been a lot of points in my career where I had to put my individual interests first in order to have the success, accomplish the goals.”
