Olympia – Mikaela Shiffrin is also eliminated early in the slalom: the Shiffrin drama

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Favorite Mikaela Shiffrin on the Xiaohaituo slalom slope: "It's very difficult for me to understand"

Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images

In her hometown of Avon, Colorado, a street is named after Mikaela Shiffrin.

The road leads from her place of residence to the US Ski Mecca Beaver Creek and has been called the Mikaela Way since 2014.

Thousands of miles away at the Beijing Winter Olympics, alpine skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin lost her way.

On Sunday she failed after just a few moments in the giant slalom, on Wednesday the same thing happened to her in the slalom, the competition that she dominates like no one before her.

She then sat on the track for a few minutes, her face buried in her arms, as if she couldn't believe what had just happened to her.

She wanted to have won two gold medals in Beijing by now, it would have been her third and fourth at the Olympic Games, now she only has chances in the combination and in the team competition.

World champion four times in a row

To appreciate the scale of this drama on the Xiaohaituo slalom slope, all you have to do is drop a few numbers.

The 26-year-old American has won 47 World Cups in slalom alone, and no one else has managed to do that so far.

She has 73 World Cup successes to her credit, in the women's category only Lindsey Vonn has won more often.

Shiffrin was world champion in slalom four times in a row, in the 2018/2019 season she was in first place in the World Cup a total of 17 times, which is also a record.

She has won the slalom world cup six times.

With her eternal rival Petra Vihova she fought a long-term duel this season, the Slovak was more often in the lead, so gold for Shiffrin was not a matter of course - but not finishing for the second time in a row, that's part of it not to the superstar's imagination.

»difficult to process«

That's why she found it difficult to put her disappointment into words, to find explanations.

"It's very difficult for me to understand and just as difficult to process," she searched for some reason in front of the ZDF camera - but without really finding it.

Her attitude was actually correct, "I was ready to attack, I was focused," but the race was over after just a few seconds.

»It was only a small slide«, but that's enough in slalom to make all dreams burst.

Speculation that public pressure was too great for her, that Shiffrin was a second case, so to speak, of Simone Biles, the US gymnast who could not withstand the strain at the Summer Games in Tokyo – Shiffrin initially rejected all of this.

It's "interesting to think about the topic," she says, but: "I've had moments in my life with incredible pressure that were much worse than now."

Nevertheless: Even the ski insiders cannot remember the event that it failed twice within three days.

Shiffrin has been in the World Cup for more than ten years, and one of her qualities is to remain stable at major events:

Her father's death hit her hard

In Sochi she won slalom gold, four years ago in Pyeongchang she won the giant slalom, in slalom, her favorite discipline, she finished fourth, just missing the medals.

That was a sensation back then, but nothing compared to the disaster in Beijing.

A lot has happened in the life of Mikaela Shiffrin since Pyeongchang.

The death of her father Jeff in February 2020, who died falling from the roof of his own house, has taken a toll on her.

She felt "as if someone was ramming a knife into my heart - every second of the day," she told SPIEGEL in a very candid interview a year later.

Shiffrin then took a break from skiing, even thought about ending his career, and decided to continue: “I still love skiing.

I had to give the sport a chance.«

Emotional message from friend

At the same time, the pandemic also came through skiing, everything changed.

The skiing world of Mikaela Shiffrin was nothing like before.

A lot has also happened in private life, since last year she has been with the Norwegian ski star Aleksander Amodt Kilde.

Kilde tweeted after the race: "It's part of the game and it happens.

The pressure we all put on individuals in sport is tremendous, so let's give back the same support.

It's all about balance, and we're just normal people!

I love you, Kaela.”

When Shiffrin won the home slalom in Killington after returning to the World Cup last year, she couldn't stop crying.

She no longer takes everything for granted, she said in the SPIEGEL interview: "Not the family, not health, not sport." So far, it was obvious that Shiffrin would win races like today's.

"At the Olympics, there's nothing but being perfect," Shiffrin said after her exit.

Being perfect - that was always Mikaela Shffrin's strength.

She told SPIEGEL: "I just want to take perfect corners and be as fast as I used to be.

The rest will take care of itself.« Not anymore in Beijing.

As she crouched like a heap of misery on the slalom slope, she became aware of it all again: "I'd really like to call my father now," she said, then tears came to her eyes.

"He'd probably tell me get over it, but he's not here to tell me."