Can she shake off performance in Beijing Olympics four years ago to return to top of podium?
By John Henderson for CPR News
Not that Mikaela Shiffrin is one of the main faces of the entire U.S.
Olympic Team, but behind her podium seat in her press conference
Saturday stood a giant Visa poster of her skiing.
And not that she needs any reminders of what millions of people
remember, but the poster was from her pratfall Olympics
four years ago in Beijing.
“It was about the only picture when I was on my feet,” she said.
The media mob howled. Hey, while the greatest World Cup skier in
history hasn’t lost her ability to ski since 2022, she also hasn’t
lost her sense of humor. And it’s hard to laugh for a three-time
Olympic medalist and two-time gold medalist falling three times in an
Olympics and not medaling in six events.
But her rise from the ashes off that cold mountain in China has turned
her into a blazing comet on mountains around the Western world.
Shiffrin comes into these Milan Cortina Winter Olympics as one of the
hottest athletes in these Games.
She has returned to her long-term lease in the penthouse of the World
Cup standings. This season she has won an astonishing seven of her
eight slalom races, finishing second in the other. She’s already
clinched her eighth slalom Crystal Globe, given to the World Cup
champion, with three races left on the calendar.
Her 780 points have nearly lapped Switzerland’s Camille Rast, who has
492. Shiffin, 30, also leads the overall standings and stands fourth
in the giant slalom. She has ballooned her world record World Cup
victory haul to 108.
And it all comes not only four years from the biggest disappointment
in her career but only 15 months after a crash in Killington, Vt.,
where her ski pole stabbed her millimeters from her colon. It poleaxed
last season. She suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“I’ve been to four different Games and they’ve been four wildly
different experiences,” Shiffrin said. “With those experiences, being
able to show up in Cortina and still be wide-eyed and just as excited
and motivated as the first is really great.”
When last Shiffrin competed in the Olympics, she was sitting on the snow in
China, shocked, dismayed and maybe a little embarrassed after crashing
for her third time. She crashed at the fourth gate in the giant slalom
and slalom and the ninth in the combined.
While she admitted to ESPN.com, “I was trying to figure out how I
could disappear from the mountain and melt under the fence,” she finished three more events, without
success, then talked about the experience to everyone from sports
psychologists to media.
Robert Andrews, the founder and director of the Institute of Sports
Psychology in Houston, has worked with athletes ranging from Olympians
to baseball players. Though he never worked with Shiffrin, he’s
familiar with what happened.
“When you don’t finish three races, it’s like a gymnast who can’t do
three backward somersaults on the beam,” he said in a phone interview.
“Or the pitcher who has the yips or a pole vaulter who just runs
through. Those are always related to stress. I’d work with her on
managing stress and distractions going in and quiet the mind chatter
going into key events like that.”
What Shiffrin did was develop a mantra, “You can fail and not be a failure.”
She also saw some benefits. After Beijing she said, “The tenacity that
shot me off that course repeatedly, multiple times, that same tenacity
will help me win more races.”
That it did. She went on in that 2021-22 season to
win the overall Crystal Globe. Then in 2022-23 she swept the overall,
slalom and giant slalom Globes. She took the slalom Globe in 2024 and
should win two more this season.
Unfortunately for skiers, the World Cup results are usually reserved
to the small type next to horse racing results in the few remaining
newspapers. Then for two weeks every four years, the skiers land on
Visa posters.
It’s not lost on Shiffrin that many fans remember her more from
Beijing than the crystal palace she has built from her trophies. If
she forgets, the trolls on social media remind her.
“Sometimes with this sport I do wish that this broader audience that
does tune in to the Games had a bit more of an understanding of what
goes on in the sport on a daily basis,” Shiffrin said. “I don’t know
how many races I’ve done this season. Seventeen?"
However, Shiffrin knows it’s no Olympian’s role to complain
“On the other side, the Olympics give us a chance to showcase us and
our sport to the world. So whether you’re watching every four years or
every single weekend in the World Cup, to have a chance to make that
connection at all is a gift.
“Despite maybe feeling a little bit of pressure at times, I know that
judgments can be made from a sole moment when so much else has gone on
over the last four years or eight years or 16 years of my career.”
The pressure begins Tuesday when she competes in the inaugural team combined
event, then continues Feb. 15 with the giant slalom and Feb. 18 with
the slalom where she’ll be the heavy favorite.
She came away from Beijing saying, “Just accept it.” Her performance
in World Cup says she has. She also knows anything can happen in
skiing. After all, snow is slippery.
“Skiing is hard because you know when you’ve made a technical error,”
she said. “You maybe know what you need to do to fix it. But it’s
still so precise and there are so many variables. It’s hard to do that
right and do it right all the time.
“In Beijing all these kinds of pieces came together and factors that
played a role, we assessed them all and I continue to assess them
including my own role to play.
“And basically, I would like to be more committed to my outside ski.
That may not mean anything to you guys but if you’re on your outside
ski you’re in the driver’s seat. And that’s been an ongoing task for
me because it’s also one of the things that played a role in my crash
in Killington. And I’m telling you, I would take Beijing any day over
crashing in Killington and getting a puncture wound to the abdomen.”
She may have the other face of the U.S. Olympic Team to ease her into
these Games. In Tuesday’s combined event, she will likely team with
Vail’s own Lindsey Vonn. She has become one of the Olympics’ biggest
stories for coming out of retirement at 41 to lead the World Cup
downhill standings and will ski in Sunday’s downhill just nine days
after blowing out her ACL.
The U.S. Ski Team will decide on Shiffrin’s partner and it may depend
on how Vonn does Sunday.
“I am so excited to watch,” Shiffrin said. “I mention tenacity and
grit. She’s true to her own values. She’s straight up beautiful. I am
excited to see Lindsey and all my teammates competing. I trained today
and I have a free day tomorrow and will be cheering and glued to the TV.
I have 100 percent belief that anything is possible.”
John Henderson is a former sportswriter for The Denver Post and now
lives in Rome.
