Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) (AFP) – Mikaela Shiffrin will make her debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics in the women’s team combined after being paired with downhill gold winner Breezy Johnson, the USA’s ski team announced on Monday. Shiffrin and Johnson are reigning world champions in the discipline, which is making its Olympic bow at the Milan-Cortina Games, and they will be hot favourites for more gold on Tuesday in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The duo will take part in their specialist disciplines, with Shiffrin taking the slopes for Tuesday afternoon’s slalom after Johnson completes the downhill in the morning. Lindsey Vonn’s horror crash out of Sunday’s downhill final, won by Johnson, ended any possibility of her being half of a dream team with Shiffrin, the most successful skier of all-time.
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Vonn underwent surgery on Sunday on a fracture in her left leg, which already had no anterior cruciate ligament, suffered during the heavy fall on the Olimpia delle Tofane piste. Shiffrin arrives in Cortina d’Ampezzo with tough memories of her disastrous last Olympics in Beijing where she failed to claim a single medal. The 30-year-old has won a record 108 races in the regular season World Cup, including seven of this term’s eight slalom races.
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