Mikaela Shiffrin’s nightmarish Beijing Olympics continued on Thursday when she tripped on a gate and toppled to the snow in the women’s combined. It was the third race she has failed to finish in the last two weeks.
Shiffrin showed good rhythm in the opening portion of the slalom, the second half of the combined event, but about 10 gates into the run she lost her balance as she was beginning to navigate a combination of gates known as a flush.
Last week, Shiffrin did not complete her best events in the first two races of the Games, the giant slalom and slalom.
A turnaround performance in Thursday’s women’s combined, Shiffrin’s last individual event of the Games, would have been a storybook ending. She was in good position at the midpoint of the race, which is one run of downhill followed by one run of slalom. What she needed next was her trademark finishing flourish, the kind that made her a champion at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
But there was no magic in her performance on Thursday afternoon.
A winner of three medals in her five Olympic races before the Beijing Games, Shiffrin has not reached the medal podium in any of her last five Olympic races.
Michelle Gisin of Switzerland won Thursday’s race, successfully defending the Olympic title she won in the combined at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. The silver medal went to her teammate Wendy Holdener, who was only one hundredth of a second behind Gisen after the opening downhill portion of the race but trailed Gisin by 1.06 seconds in the second run of slalom. It was Holdener’s fourth Olympic medal. Federica Brignone of Italy won the bronze medal. Last week, she won the silver medal in the giant slalom.
