Mikaela Shiffrin wins gold in women’s slalom
Barry Svrluga
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KRASNAYA POLYANA – Before the Olympics began, Mikaela Shiffrin envisioned the events of Friday night: skiing under the lights, the Caucasus Mountains around her, an Olympic crowd at the base of the hill. She envisioned, too, everything that could go wrong in a slalom race, a missed gate or a caught rut. But she always put those behind, and won gold.
Friday night, all those teenage dreams became quite real, and Shiffrin became the first U.S. Alpine women’s skier to win gold at the Sochi Olympics, taking the women’s slalom with a combined time of 1:44.54, enough to beat Austria’s Marlies Schild by 0.53 seconds. Kathrin Zettel, also of Austria, won bronze.
The victory completes a swift ascent for Shiffrin, the 18-year-old from Eagle-Vail, Colo., who combines sublime gifts with preternatural drive and an unrelenting willingness to train. With her 19th birthday next month, she became the youngest women’s skier ever to win an Olympic slalom.
Following the afternoon first run, Shiffrin led by 0.49 of a second over Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch, with Slovenia’s Tina Maze another 0.18 back. Her mother, Eileen, said she was battling a cold likely caught during Tuesday’s giant slalom, which was contested almost entirely in the rain.
She also had to absorb the idea that this was her best event, and she was the favorite.
“In general it’s nerve-wracking,” Eileen Shiffrin said. “It just is. But she seemed in a good place when she went up there. But it’s funny. Nerves are funny. You can be fine one second and awful the next second. You never know when it’s going to creep in there.”
Shiffrin, though, skied beautifully in the first run. If she had any nerves, she left them in the starting gate.
“I was pretty relaxed,” she said. “Thank goodness, because there are a couple points throughout the day where I was like,” and she mimicked a panicked breathing, as if she was hyperventilating. “ ‘Oh my god, here we go.’ But no, I was relaxed in the start, and that was awesome.”
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