Two-time Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin out of giant slalom at Beijing Olympics
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YANQING, China — Mikaela Shiffrin's first chance for a gold medal was over almost as soon as it began.
Expected to contend for multiple medals at the Beijing Olympics, several of them gold, Shiffrin lost an edge on the fifth gate of the first run of the women’s giant slalom and skied out. It’s the first time she’s failed to finish a GS race since January 2018.
"It's a huge disappointment. Not even counting the medals," Shiffrin said afterward. "The easiest thing to say is I skied a couple of good turns and skied one turn a bit wrong and really paid the hardest of consequences for that."
With three Olympic medals – two gold and one silver – from her first two Winter Games, Shiffrin needs one more to tie Julia Mancuso for most by an American woman. Two more golds would tie her with Janica Kostelic and Kjetil Andre Aamodt for most in Alpine skiing.
Shiffrin has said she hopes to do all five individual events at the Beijing Olympics, and her next race will be Wednesday's slalom. With her day now over earlier than expected, she planned to spend time training slalom.
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"I'm not going to cry about this because it's just wasting energy," Shiffrin said. "I'm going to do my very best to keep right mentally and keep pushing."
Shiffrin is the defending Olympic champion in GS, and had won two World Cup races in the discipline earlier this season. Though she has not had much training time in the event this season -- a back injury limited her after her win in the season-opener at Soelden -- she has traditionally been a model of consistency in the event.
Before that DNF in 2018, which occurred in Kronplatz, Italy, it had been two years since she'd failed to finish a GS race. She has seven DNFs in her career.
Shiffrin said she felt good through the first four gates. But as she rounded the fifth gate, she lost her balance and tipped off the left edge of her skis. She skied off to the side and stood there for several seconds, looking at the area where her hopes for gold ended.
"It's hard to know exactly without looking at the video," Shiffrin said. "But anytime you go to the side line that, it's a mistiming of where you're pressuring and how you're pressuring the turns."
Asked how she would get over this, Shiffrin said she never would, then proceeded to name the other GS races where she didn't finish. But she can't allow herself to wallow.
There are too many races left and, possibly, medals to win.
"Now," she said, "we reset."