Mikaela Shiffrin raised her arms apologizing. At the foot of the rainbow slope in Pyeongchang, the top favourite found surprisingly no gold on Friday and, in view of her previous winter, this was a huge sensation, not even a medal – only sheet metal.
One day after her Olympic victory in giant slalom, the American had to watch Frida Hansdotter watch with horror as she won the first Swedish slalom gold medal since 1992. For Shiffrin, only fourth place came in behind combination world champion Wendy Holdener (Switzerland) and Austria’s Katharina Gallhuber, who almost flew in the second run. The German team delivered its worst result in the Winter Games.
Shiffrin, for whom gold was firmly scheduled, had vomited shortly before the start of the first round. This in itself was not yet a peculiarity: the 22-year-old is considered to be hyper nervous and is known for a very restless stomach. But this time it was different:”It feels more like a virus, it wasn’t about the nerves, but she was” glad to have the first run behind me “and she was” not super far away “.
It was only 0.48 seconds on Holdener, who led first before the Swedish duo Hansdotter and Anna Swenn Larsson. This is not much in the slalom, Shiffrin has made up for larger arrears on the way to their many titles. This time it was nothing. She lacked the rhythm for which she is so famous, the will to attack, and somehow the feeling for the course. Bronze remained eight hundredths of a second away because Gallhuber danced from ninth place as obsessively through the poles to third place.
The German racers had nothing to do with the decision. Lena Dürr (Germering) retired in the first run after just eight seconds and a threader, which she couldn’t explain to herself,”I don’t know what it was because of,”she said frustrated. Marina Wallner from Inzell finished in 19th place as the best German without a chance – it was the worst German result at the Olympic Winter Games (previously 15th place, Martina Ertl 1992), and this in a discipline that is actually a German domain with eight medals (3x gold). A historic flop. Christina Geiger (Oberstdorf) retired in the second round.
Slalom: That’s been Mikaela Shiffrin for years. At 17, she was already World Champion in 2013, followed by Olympic victory in Sochi in 2014 and two more World Championship titles (2015,2017). The American is a perfectionist. Every detail is taken care of by her or her always demanding mother Eileen, nothing should be left to chance. With this attitude she has come a long way, even though her team mate Lindsey Vonn, the far more extroverted of the female US ski stars, is more popular.
Shiffrin is a very quiet person, some call her boring. But she’s a damn good skier. Only not so good this Friday – in contrast to Frida Hansdotter, who followed in the footsteps of Pernilla Wiberg. Previously, the 32-year-old’s biggest success at the 2015 World Cup in the USA had been silver.