After a faltering, humbling start to her Beijing Olympics last week, Mikaela Shiffrin could be poised to end her visit to China with a flourish. At the midpoint of her last individual event of the Games, Shiffrin is in position to win the women’s Alpine combined on Thursday.
But it will come down to how skillfully, and coolly, she can ski the second portion of the event, which is one run of slalom. It is a race that has always been Shiffrin’s best, but it was also one of the races she failed to complete early last week at the Beijing Games.
Shiffrin’s agile, attacking downhill run of 1 minute 32.98 seconds Thursday put her in fifth place, 0.56 of a second behind the leader, Christine Scheyer of Austria. But Scheyer, like most of the top finishers in the first run, is primarily a speed skier with little background of racing the slalom on the elite level.
“It’s nice to know I have some practice and certainly a lot of speed in slalom,” Shiffrin said after the downhill. “But I also have a little bit of, I don’t know, I have to overcome the image that I am going to ski out on the fifth gate. I am just trying to stay calm because I think I was doing pretty well with that this morning. Stay calm and have a good run at slalom.”
Shiffrin is one of just a handful of skiers who do have the skills to compete for the podium in the combined event, which tests skiers’ diverse abilities on the mountain by combining their times from one run of the speedy downhill and one run of the technically demanding slalom. Since Shiffrin is the most decorated slalom skier in history, staying in touch with the leaders after the downhill portion — which she did — will give her a distinct advantage in the second stage of the race.
The slalom portion of the race will begin at 2 p.m. Thursday in China (1 a.m. Eastern time in the United States). Shiffrin’s chances in the combined were much improved when one of her chief rivals, Petra Vlhova of Slovakia, withdrew from the event and left China after winning the gold medal in the women’s slalom last week.
Shiffrin told NBC after her downhill run that she had used skis belonging to Sofia Goggia of Italy, who came back from a brutal fall and debilitating injury last month to win the silver medal in the downhill Tuesday. Goggia left a note for Shiffrin on the skis, telling her the skis could “fly.”
“I was just trying to stay calm and not think about the course too much and not try to make too much of a strategy, but just ski it and find my tuck whenever I could,” Shiffrin said.
Shiffrin’s biggest competition in the second half of the race will be Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, who trailed her by 0.43 of a second. Her other major Swiss competition, Michelle Gisin, the defending Olympic champion in the event, was a hundredth of a second behind Holdener.
Shiffrin stopped and watched Holdener’s run on the big screen, from start to finish, leaning forward with her poles in her armpits and staring up to take in every turn. When Holdener finished, Shiffrin gave a quick nod, lifted up off her poles and headed inside to rest up for the biggest run of her slalom career. Shiffrin won the silver medal in the combined at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. Holdener won the bronze.
In 2018, Shiffrin was in sixth place after the downhill, 1.21 seconds behind the eventual winner, Gisin. Shiffrin took the silver after a strong slalom showing, and Holdener took the bronze.
Shiffrin came to the Olympics favored to win medals in multiple events. But she was disqualified in the giant slalom and slalom races last week. She finished ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill.
Shiffrin’s stumbles in the opening races of the Beijing Olympics were unfathomable — failures, she later called them — but as she enters her final individual race at these Winter Games, a long Olympic journey is still ahead for her.
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