[ad_1]
Mikaela Shiffrin’s 2022 Olympic Games came to an anticlimactic and devastating end on Sunday in the bronze-medal race of the wind-delayed mixed team parallel event.
Shiffrin had been hoping to salvage her unexpected time in Beijing with one final shot at a medal as part of the American team, which also included Paula Moltzan, River Radamus and Tommy Ford, in the last alpine event, but instead the squad lost to Norway in a tiebreak.
The U.S. team embraced at the bottom of the mountain after discovering their fourth-place finish. Still, Shiffrin remained positive after the race, and praised her teammates in a joint interview after the race.
“I am not disappointed,” Shiffrin said. “I have had a lot of disappointing moments at these Games, today is not one of them. Today is my favorite memory. This was the best possible way that I could imagine ending the Games, skiing with such strong teammates.”
Already one of the most decorated skiers in history and the owner of three previous Olympic medals, the 26-year-old was expected to win multiple medals at the Games and had expressed her hope to compete in all five individual disciplines. While she was able to participate in every event, not much else went to plan. Shiffrin recorded uncharacteristic “Did Not Finish” results in the grand slalom, slalom and combined races, and finished in ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill. Had she won one medal, she would have tied her with Julia Mancuso for the most medals by an American woman in alpine skiing.
She’s been candid about her struggles throughout and expressed her confusion about her challenging stretch.
“I don’t know, sometimes you just have to take it, I guess,” Shiffrin told NBC on Thursday after crashing out of the slalom portion of the combined event. “Try to fix it the next time. I don’t know what I’m supposed to fix. That’s the frustrating thing. I don’t think there’s something to fix. It just went really, really wrong.”
The team event, which pits a skier…
[ad_2]
Source : espn
