Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) (AFP) – Mikaela Shiffrin is an Olympic champion again after roaring to victory in the slalom on Wednesday to bring an end to her eight-year medal drought on the biggest stage of all. Looming over the starting gate with an 0.82 second lead from her fizzing first run, American star Shiffrin glided down the piste in Cortina d’Ampezzo to beat the world’s best technical skiers by a huge margin.
Shiffrin was on the verge of tears after claiming the third Olympic title of her career, and her first since giant slalom gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, crossing the line in first place to release immense pressure to perform. “Today I showed up for the skiing. I wanted to have two runs with really strong slalom skiing. Now to be through that is a little bit challenging to process,” said Shiffrin. She added: “I wanted to be free, I wanted to unleash. It’s not easy to do that, but I’ve been so focused every single day… Now, to also get to have a medal is unbelievable.”
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The 30-year-old finished a whopping 1.50 seconds ahead of world champion Camille Rast, who took the first medal of these Games for the Swiss women’s ski team, with Sweden’s Anna Swenn-Larsson rounding out the podium. Swenn-Larsson’s first Olympic medal, at the age of 34, came after Lena Duerr, who was second fastest in the first run, somehow crashed out at the first gate of her second. The only racer faster than Shiffrin in the second run was her teammate Paula Moltzan, whose brave bid for a second medal in northern Italy was foiled by her poor first run which left her in 28th position. Moltzan, who took bronze in the team combined, jumped up to eighth but was eventually more than two seconds off Shiffrin’s pace.
“It gets to somebody at some point if people are only saying bad things about you,” said Moltzan of criticism of Shiffrin’s Olympic displays. “You don’t have the perfect run, and we get ripped apart by people that sit on the couch and that sucks.”
– Slalom queen Shiffrin –
Shiffrin has banished memories of both her last Olympics in Beijing — where she failed to pick up a single medal from six races and didn’t even finish three — and her disappointing displays leading up to the final alpine ski race of the Olympics. She came to Cortina as a red-hot favourite to claim at least one gold due to her sensational form this season which has taken her all-time record of World Cup wins to 108. Shiffrin had already won the slalom title in the World Cup after coming out on top in seven of this season’s races, finishing just 0.14 seconds behind Rast in Kranjska Gora the one time she didn’t win.
A slalom gold is a happy ending to a difficult Olympics for both Shiffrin and the US ski team, whose Games were dominated by Lindsey Vonn’s horror crash and leg break in the downhill race which opened proceedings in Cortina. Before Wednesday, Breezy Johnson’s downhill gold had been the highlight for the US and she would have had at least another medal had Shiffrin not been 15th fastest in the slalom run of the team combined. And Shiffrin’s first Olympic slalom gold since Sochi in 2014 has nicely bookended the Games for the Americans who leave Italy with four alpine skiing medals overall — three won by the women.
Outgoing Olympic champion Petra Vlhova showed that she is on the comeback trail after finishing 20th even though she only just scraped into the top 30 after her first run. Vlhova was 12th fastest in the second leg, less than a second slower than Shiffrin, to give herself a creditable end to her Olympics. “It takes time, you know, step by step,” the Slovak said. “Generally, I am proud of myself.” Vlhova has been grappling with a serious knee injury since January 2024 and only made her return to action in the team combined last week, failing to finish her slalom run.
© 2024 AFP
