After days of disappointment, Mikaela Shiffrin storms to slalom lead after first run
MILAN — In her third and final chance at a medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin took a commanding lead in slalom after the first of two runs Wednesday.
Shiffrin raced down a Cortina d’Ampezzo course with nearly 600 feet of elevation gain to finish in 47.13 seconds after her first run, 0.82 seconds ahead of the rest of the field.
Skiers complete two slalom runs and times are combined to determine medals. The second round will begin at 7:30 a.m. EST.
Germany’s Lena Duerr placed second after the first run, while Sweden’s Cornelia Oehlund finished third.
“It was a really good race, for me it was really clean and very active but also a little bit on the limit,” Shiffrin told NBC after her race. “There were a few moments where I thought I could easily walk off this course right now, but keep pushing and fighting and in the end I made it to the finish.”
Slalom is Shiffrin’s strongest event. Of his record 108 Alpine Skiing World Cup victories, 71 have been in slalom. At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Shiffrin, then 18, won the gold medal in slalom, becoming the youngest skier to win.
Yet she has struggled to replicate that dominance in the glare of the Olympics, with her last medal coming in 2018. Shiffrin is also not yet two years removed from a November 2024 fall during a giant slalom race that left her with a puncture wound in her side and what she described as accident-induced PTSD.
At these winter games, Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson combined to finish fourth in the team combined event and 11th in giant slalom. Three days before taking the slalom lead, Shiffrin said on Instagram that “my skiing in the first race didn’t go the way I imagined. I fought for every hundredth and didn’t totally get the execution right. That was definitely a cause for disappointment.”
But there were no disappointments after Wednesday’s first set, which Shiffrin summed up with a smile.
“Today I felt pretty excited,” Shiffrin said. “It’s hard not to be excited on days like today. The weather is nice and it’s just beautiful. I’ve had a little bit of butterflies for sure, it’s just going to be part of this day, but I feel pretty ready to deal with the nerves and it’s just about doing my skiing.
“I’m really focused (on) the start, until the gates of the finish. What happens between the start and the finish and the rest doesn’t matter.”
Greif reported from Milan.
