Winter Olympics: Mikaela Shiffrin still looking for first medal after 11th in giant slalom

MILAN — Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic woes continue. Dominant everywhere else on earth and on the calendar, Shiffrin can’t seem to figure out how to get on the podium during the two weeks of the Olympics. Her latest result: 11th place in the giant slalom, 0.92 seconds behind gold medal winner Federica Brignone of Italy and 0.25 seconds off the podium. 

On her first run of the day, Shiffrin skied exactly the run she needed to on her first attempt. Skiing with speed but a touch of caution, Shiffrin posted a time of 1:04.25, 0.28 seconds behind the two leaders before her. Once all of the 76 skiers in the first run had their opportunity on the slopes, Shiffrin stood in seventh overall, 1.02 seconds behind Brignone. 

Shiffrin’s second run of the day started well enough, but she floated around the early turns and simply could not create enough speed in the second half of the course. She finished 0.25 seconds behind the in-race leader, good for seventh place at the time of her finish. And not even that would hold as the first-run leaders were still to come.

It’s the second gold for Brignone at these Games, after she won the super-G, capping a remarkable comeback. Just last April, Brignone suffered a catastrophic wreck in the giant slalom event of the Italian Championships. She broke her left tibia and fibula and ruptured her left ACL, but fought her way back into the Olympics and a role as Italy’s flag bearer at the Opening Ceremony. 

Sweden’s Sara Hector and Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund tied for the silver.

But it’s another podium without Shiffrin, another opportunity for the same uncomfortable questions to gain volume, even if giant slalom isn’t her best event. 

Shiffrin came into the Milan Olympics with something to prove, an odd but true statement about a skier who’s won more World Cup events than anyone, male or female, in history. But her 10 World Cup victories, including one in the Czech Republic just days before the start of these Olympics, mean absolutely nothing when she’s standing atop the mountain at Cortina d’Ampezzo. 

For whatever reason, the Olympics have bedeviled Shiffrin the last four-plus years. After she claimed two golds and a silver in her first two Games, Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018, Shiffrin skied into Beijing in 2022 looking to establish absolute dominance over her sport. But she didn’t even finish three of the events she entered, and left Beijing without a medal. 

She later conceded that the ghosts of Beijing hung over her, and a devastating wreck in Killington in 2024 further dented her confidence. And despite all her victories since then, a struggle in the women’s team combined event earlier in these Games gave those ghosts new life. 

In that event, teammate Breezy Johnson posted the fastest time in the downhill half of the competition, meaning Shiffrin only needed to perform at her level in her signature event, the slalom, to shake off her recent past and bring home another medal. But Shiffrin skied a tentative run, and she and Johnson finished 0.06 seconds off the podium. (Shiffrin’s misfire meant teammates Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan won bronze, a small comfort in an otherwise depressing day.) 

Shortly after the team event, Shiffrin took to social media for a pair of posts that seemed to point toward her mindset. On Friday, she posted “Olympic Reflections” that almost seemed like a preemptive strike at criticism of her performance. “May we all champion one another, tread lightly on what we don’t fully comprehend, and have the fortitude to keep showing up,” she wrote.

Then, hours before the giant slalom competition, Shiffrin posted a video expressing “an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I simply get to be here, after everything” — specifically referencing her devastating Killington wreck. 

Shiffrin has one event remaining at the Olympics, the slalom event on Wednesday.