With one last chance to break an Olympic hoodoo stretching back a remarkable eight years, Mikaela Shiffrin delivered in style. The 30-year-old American surged to victory in the women’s slalom on a sun-splashed Wednesday in the Dolomites with a two-run time of 1min 39.10sec, becoming the first US skier to win three Olympic gold medals.
Switzerland’s Camille Rast, the reigning world champion and only woman to have beaten Shiffrin in her signature discipline this season, came in a yawning 1.50sec behind for the silver – the largest winning margin in any Olympic alpine skiing event since 1998 – while Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden took the bronze. After fourth-placed Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, the rest of the field trailed by at least two seconds in the final race of the alpine skiing program of the Milano Cortina Games.
Wearing the No 7 bib, Shiffrin overcame a split-second wobble during her opening run when she clipped a gate midway down the course, but she regained her rhythm immediately and pumped her first after crossing in 47.13sec, a huge 0.82sec ahead of Germany’s Lena Duerr and the largest first-run lead in an Olympic women’s slalom in 66 years. No one else came within a second of Shiffrin’s time.
Nearly four hours later, after Duerr’s hopes were foiled in a flash when she hooked the first gate out of the hut, Shiffrin was just as commanding on her second trip down the gleaming Olympia delle Tofane track, with nearly 600 feet of vertical drop. She managed to build on her early lead, becoming only the second woman to win the Olympic slalom more than once after Switzerland’s Vreni Schneider. The Vail, Colorado, native stared in disbelief at the clock after gliding through the line before acknowledging the roaring crowd and finding her mother and coach, Eileen, near the finish area.
“The skiing is what I cared about and of course, to medal and [to win] gold, I mean, that’s a dream come true,” Shiffrin told NBC in the aftermath. “But at some point this week, I just said: ‘Stop dreaming, just ski.’ This whole time has been waiting for two times 45 seconds today, to be able to ski, and I’m so happy to be able to do the right thing in the right moment.”
Shiffrin’s Olympic ledger stripped of context – slalom gold as an 18-year-old prodigy in Sochi, giant slalom gold and combined silver in Pyeongchang – would be career-defining for most skiers. But she had failed to medal in any of the six races sheentered in Beijing four years ago, including three shocking DNFs.
And while she rebounded to win a fifth overall World Cup title across all disciplines the following year, there were some around the circuit – including Shiffrin herself – who openly wondered if a harrowing crash two years ago during a World Cup race in Killington, Vermont, had taken something out of her she would never get back.
But she answered those questions with brio on Wednesday, becoming the oldest US woman to win a gold medal in alpine skiing after becoming the youngest 12 years ago. She has now won 58 of 72 slalom races when leading after the opening run, an 81% conversion rate that places her among the sport’s great closers.
Shiffrin’s long-time rival in her preferred discipline, Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova, appeared far less than 100% in defense of her 2022 Beijing Olympic gold. Having returned to competition last week after a two-year recovery from multiple torn ligaments in her right knee, the 30-year-old came in nearly three seconds adrift of Shiffrin’s marker after the first run and could only improve to 20th overall.
Germany’s 22-year-old Emma Aicher, who took silver in the downhill last week, demonstrated her vast all-around promise by finishing ninth. Albania’s Lara Colturi, the lone teenager in the contest, finished in a tie for 10th alongside France’s Caitlin McFarlane.
Only four other winter athletes have won gold in the same event after a gap of 12 years and all of those were in team events, according to the Olympedia.org website, the most comprehensive database about the Olympic Games.
“Of course I can believe it because it’s real, it’s something I’ve done before,” Shiffrin said. “But then to do it in this moment, on this day – every time I’m able to manage my best skiing it’s somehow a surprise, because it’s stressful. But it’s so fun, too.
“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.”
