Shiffrin and Johnson fall out of medals in team combined skiing

By John Henderson, for CPR News

This time Mikaela Shiffrin didn’t fall. But she still has to get back up.

Handed a narrow lead heading into her slalom half of the Olympic inaugural team combined Tuesday, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and eight-time world champion from Edwards skied the worst race of her season.

By a mountain pass.

Skiing last because her teammate Breezy Johnson had the fastest time in downhill leg, Shiffrin had only the 15th best slalom time, dropping her team, the defending world champions, from first to fourth, .06 out of a medal. During her World Cup season, she won seven of eight slaloms and finished second in the other. She had already clinched her ninth Crystal Globe for the season slalom title.

Then, four years after falling three times in the Beijing Olympics, another Olympic dream melted in the snow.

“I will have some learning to do,” Shiffrin said. “Like always.”

Going into the day, she seemed a near lock for a medal, if not favorite for gold. Johnson, from Jackson Hole, Wyo., came in smoking hot, having the top downhill training run Saturday and followed that with the gold medal on Sunday. 

She had the top time in her downhill leg on Tuesday. It was a razor thin margin of only .06 but Shiffrin is the greatest slalomist in history. What could go wrong?

Well, she fell behind at the very first split at minus-.11 then it went up to minus-.13 and then minus-.24. They finished minus-.31 out of first and fell off the podium to fourth.

“I didn’t quite find the comfort level that allows me to produce full speed,” said Shiffrin who has giant slalom Sunday and the slalom Feb. 18. “So I’m going to learn what to do, what to adjust in the short time we have before the other tech races. There’s always something to learn.”

Shiffrin appeared upbeat. She celebrated with her teammates after Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan won the bronze medal. Shiffrin didn’t hang her head. But she definitely didn’t have the zip she had on the other mountains around the World Cup circuit.

“It’s a feeling under the feet, a feedback from what’s going on under the feet,” she said. “But it’s hard to explain. I want to be careful not to make excuses because it’s not really an excuse. It’s just that all the work we’ve done. I’ve been so prepared for all the slaloms this year.

“So there is something to learn and I’m going to learn it.”

The team combined is a new Olympic event with a downhiller and a slalomist from the same country. It’s a new dynamic, one that Johnson described as “both the most and least pressure that you ever feel as a racer.”

“I was so excited watching Breezy this morning,” said Shiffrin with Johnson at her side talking to the media. “What an incredible downhill, winning gold two days ago and 48 hours of media and just the craziness you go through to be Olympic champion and she backed it up with just an incredible performance. You were going for it. You weren’t protecting anything. I was so inspired and proud of you.

“I was taking that into my own mentality into my slalom run.”

Shiffrin not only had her fate in her hands but also Johnson’s. Slalomists who crashed or missed gates at the finish were greeted with long, consolable hugs from teammates.

When Shiffrin finished, Johnson greeted her with a U.S. flag over her shoulders and a long embrace. And then some soothing words.

“I said, ‘I knew you tried your best,” Johnson said. “‘I hope you had fun and you’ll learn from this.’ We all become champions from negative experiences.”

Shiffrin said the slalomist’s comfort zone is highly detailed and includes many factors she had no time to describe. She must meet with her coaches and technical director to learn what happened.

“It is a sport of fine margins,” she said. “This kind of happens more often than not in training. Where it’s, Oh, I don’t feel quite comfortable enough. There’s a certain amount of luck when it goes right but there’s also a feeling that I’m going to work to achieve for this slalom race coming up.”

Shiffrin also mentioned difficult conditions that no one on the team had seen this year.

“I didn’t adjust to it,” she said. “Not yet. But that was a great opportunity to learn. What I wish is that Breezy could walk away with a medal. At the same time I’m really happy that Paula and Jackie are walking away with a medal.”

If there was a comeback Olympic story in the race it was Wiles and Moltzan. In last year’s World Championships, Moltzan skied last with the lead but couldn’t hold it as her team finished fourth.

Then in Sunday’s downhill, Wiles was left in tears after she finished fourth, missing a medal by .27 seconds.

This time, Wiles’ downhill put them in fourth. Moltzan then skied the fourth fastest slalom of the day to earn them their first Olympic medals. The Austrian team of Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber won the gold, edging Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher by only .05.

Shiffrin was asked if the race could affect her confidence going into her giant slalom and slalom.

“We always do better with more information,” she said. “I got a lot of information today. I don’t exactly know what that is yet, but we’re going to do a lot of analysis.”

John Henderson is a former Denver Post sportswriter who lives in Rome.