CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy ― There was no way the number could be right.
Next to Mikaela Shiffrin’s name was a 15, and it wasn’t her bib number.
The greatest slalom skier of all time had finished 15th in her run in the team combined, dropping her and Breezy Johnson to fourth place Tuesday, Feb. 10. It is shocking enough when Shiffrin isn’t on the podium after a slalom race, let alone being outside the top five.
But 15th? Aside from a few ‘did not finishes,’ that hasn’t happened in a slalom race in more than a decade, since before she won her first Olympic gold medal and rewrote the record book.
‘I was so inspired and proud of (Breezy),’ a somber Shiffrin said, referring to Johnson winning the downhill run two days after winning the Olympic downhill title. “And I was really taking that into my own mentality coming out for the solemn run and didn’t quite nail — I didn’t quite find a comfort level that allows me to produce full speed.”
Shiffrin is never one to make excuses, and she wasn’t about to start now. Asked why she couldn’t find that comfort level, she said it’s a “feeling under the feet.” But what prompted that, she didn’t want to get into the details.
Besides, does it really matter? In a season when Shiffrin has been near-unbeatable in slalom races — she has won seven and been second in the other — she was third-to-last. A full second slower than Germany’s Emma Aicher, who had the fastest slalom run to boost her and Kira Weidle-Winkelmann to the silver medal.
‘It comes from a lot of different variables. It is a sport of fine margins and a lot of variables,” Shiffrin said. ‘This kind of thing happens more often than not in training where it’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t quite feel 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 the slalom race coming up.”
But hanging over Shiffrin, like the clouds and snow that had descended over the Olimpia delle Tofane course, is the specter of Beijing.
Shiffrin won three medals, two of them gold, in her first two Olympics, and she went to the 2022 Winter Games favored to add a few more to her collection. Instead, she skied out of three races: the slalom, the giant slalom and the slalom portion of the individual combined. Her best individual finish was a ninth in the super-G.
It’s an aberration in her illustrious career, something to be written off as a fluke or the convergence of a perfect storm of circumstances. Especially since she hasn’t experienced anything like that since.
Until now.
In a race when other skiers were going all out, Shiffrin appeared almost tentative. Instead of her usual almost hypnotic rhythm that carries her from one gate right into the next, she seemed to be picking her way down the course.
‘It’s very specific in the conditions we saw today where it’s the first time that we’ve seen any conditions like that this season,’ Shiffrin said. ‘And I didn’t adjust to it, not yet. But that was a great opportunity to learn.’
It is far too soon to say that Shiffrin has a mental bloc about the Olympics. This is one race, and there is more potential for unexpected results in slalom than other disciplines. Austria’s Katharina Truppe, who is fourth in the slalom standings this season, was 13th. Switzerland’s Melanie Meillard, who was eighth in slalom last year, DNFd.
But there is a different standard for Shiffrin, whose 108 World Cup wins are more than any other skier, male or female, and a record that is unlikely to ever be broken. Fairly or not, until Shiffrin steps on an Olympic podium again, the doubts caused by Beijing will follow her.
‘The work we’ve done, I’ve been so prepared for so much, for all the slaloms this year,’ Shiffrin said. “So there’s something to learn from this day and I’m going to learn it.”
A bad day is sometimes just a bad day. At the Olympics, though, everything is magnified, and for no one more than Shiffrin.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
