By Simon Evans
YANQING, China (Reuters) – Mikaela Shiffrin will bounce back from her miserable medalless Olympic Games and return to the peak of Alpine skiing, double gold medalist Michelle Gisin had predicted.
Switzerland’s Gisin retained her gold medal in combined on Thursday delivering a superb slalom run while Shiffrin, incredibly, skied out on the Ice River slalom course for the third time in these Games.
Shiffrin competed in all five races at Beijing but far from winning medals in each of them — as some had predicted — she ended with one top ten finish (in super-G) and three Did Not Finish results.
“I feel really sorry for her, those were horrible Olympic Games for her,” said Gisin.
“But I told her, I feel pretty badass about winning one slalom in my career but she has 47, so she is 47 times as badass as I am,” she added.
Gisin, who has been part of the hugely successful Swiss team that has won five golds in Alpine ski, said she expects fortune to swing back in favour of the American.
“The wheel turns you know. She managed to stay on top of the wheel for an incredibly long time and now it’s a low. Someone asked me a couple of days ago how I feel about that and I said, ‘it’s just normal’.
“The wheel, it keeps turning and sometimes you are up there, sometimes you are down there and that’s just how normal athletes and human beings live it. For her, sure it’s really hard because she was always on top and then you fall down a lot. But I am extremely sure that she will bounce back and be very strong again, soon,” she added.
A six-time world champion, Shiffrin won gold in giant slalom in Pyeongchang after winning gold in slalom at Sochi in 2014. She also claimed a silver medal in the combined four years ago in South Korea.
She still has a chance of leaving Beijing with a medal as she is expected to feature in the United States mixed team squad for Saturday’s parallel slalom event.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
