“It all just feels like a joke,” said Mikaela Shiffrin after the third failure in her fifth Olympic race in Yanqing. After zero numbers in slalom and giant slalom, the US ski dominator was also eliminated in the combination yesterday. A hole in the slalom slope had stopped the 26-year-old on her way to a gold medal, which was probably certain. “I don’t blame the hole, many others have done it,” Shiffrin said.
For the third time, the abbreviation DNF – “did not finish” (did not finish) – was in the result lists after their name in the games. For the American, who is otherwise so confident, this frequency is a novelty: “60 percent of the DNF of my entire career happened at these Olympic Games.”
After Gold 2014 (slalom) and Gold 2018 (giant slalom), the US media had previously stylized her to one of the faces of these games. There will now be a lot of talk about how spectacularly she had failed during those weeks when it mattered most. “It’s weird, but I’m not afraid of it. Maybe because I’m emotionally exhausted.”
Touching help from Goggia
For the combination descent, in which Shiffrin finished fifth, Olympic silver medalist Sofia Goggia lent her skis. And the Italian gave her a touching message. “Fly Mika, you can” (Fly Mika, you can) read a small piece of paper stuck to the skis. “I saw it at the start and almost started crying,” Shiffrin told NBC.
With the final team competition, Shiffrin still has one last chance for a medal in the night to tomorrow (4 a.m. in ORF 1). She will notice this, even if she is asking herself the question of meaning: “I have no idea why I keep doing this to myself. Especially after a day like today. But I will come back tomorrow and train parallel giant slalom, I’m such an idiot I.”
Source: Nachrichten
