Mikaela Shiffrin, the greatest female alpine skier of all time, suffered yet more Winter Olympic heartbreak as she kickstarted her games on Tuesday.
Shiffrin and freshly-crowned Olympic downhill champion Breezy Johnson had been widely considered to be unequivocal favorites to capture gold for Team USA in the women’s team combined event in Milan-Cortina.
However, Shiffrin’s slalom run shocking saw the American power duo plummet out of medal contention, seeing them leave the slopes empty handed.
Her teammate, Johnson, who clinched gold in the women’s downhill following Lindsey Vonn‘s horror crash on Sunday, had placed Shiffrin in perfect position with a first-run lead in the downhill.
But Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup racer of all time, squandered Johnson’s lead when she took over in the slalom.
In a tense run, Shiffrin’s time saw her and Johnson tumble from first down to fourth, costing them not only the gold but a medal altogether.
Mikaela Shiffrin, the greatest female alpine skier of all time, suffered more Olympic heartbreak
The American missed out on a medal in the in the women’s team combined event
The result saw Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria take home gold and Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher earn silver.
It wasn’t all misery for the US, however, as the other American pairing, Paula Moltzan and Jacqueline Wiles, clinched bronze.
The team combined consists of one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with the times from the two added together to determine the results.
Shiffrin lost time to the leaders at every checkpoint and crossed 0.31 seconds behind – missing a medal by finishing 0.06 behind the other American team. In the finish area, Johnson – who was coming off a gold in the individual downhill – embraced Shiffrin, while the Austrians and other podium finishers began celebrating.
Shiffrin, who has a record 108 victories – 71 of them in slalom, also a record – has now gone seven straight Olympic races without a medal.
After taking two golds and silver from her first two Olympics, Shiffrin also didn´t win a medal in any of her six races at the Beijing Games four years ago.
The American, who suffered gruesome injuries in a horror crash in 2024, admitted last month that she considered not making a return to the games.
She had to be stretchered off the slopes in Vermont after doing a flip and careening into the protective barriers during the Killington Cup in November 2024, sustaining traumatic injuries.
Her teammate, Breezy Johnson, claimed gold in the women’s downhill on Sunday
Johnson laid down an impressive run in the downhill to give her and Shiffrin the lead
Johnson hugs Shiffrin after her slalom run saw the US plummet from first to fourth
She suffered a five-centimeter puncture wound to her hip area, which narrowly avoided her colon by one millimeter.
And over a year on from the horrific incident, Shiffrin revealed that the mental and physical toll of her injuries left her questioning if she would ever compete again.
‘When I was returning last year and I was on the cusp of losing my standings in GS (Grand Slalom), that was the question. Can I get myself to a high enough level to earn the World Cup points to keep my standings or not?’ she told People. ‘Because if I don’t, that might be the end of my GS career.’
‘I don’t know that I have it in me to work all the way back from that place again,’ she admitted.
She went on to reveal that the complexities of returning to competition extended far beyond physical recovery, detailing the process behind professional skiing rankings including the importance of the World Cup points system.
‘When you don’t race World Cups due to injury, you can freeze your World Cup points. World Cup points is what allows you to have a good bib number, which is what gives you a priority start number,’ she explained.
‘When you return from an injury, your points unfreeze and you lose the injury status. You’re racing again, but you need to be accumulating World Cup points.
Shiffrin had also suffered a sprained MCL and tibiofibular ligament in her left knee after a downhill crash in January 2024.
Shiffrin lost time to the leaders at every checkpoint, missing a medal by 0.06 off bronze
The American admitted she questioned returning to competition after her 2024 horror crash
While she returned from that crash two months after suffering the injuries, it still kept her out of Grand Slalom competition for the remainder of that season as she only had time to train for the Slalom races.
At the time, she didn’t expect to suffer yet another horrific crash just mere months later during the following season – which left her Grand Slalom standings in jeopardy.
‘I was not thinking I was going to have another injury last season, and that would take me out of GS again,’ she said of her November 2024 injury. ‘I was basically on the very edge of being knocked out of the top 30… and that’s a severe disadvantage.’
Shiffrin went on to secure her historic 100th World Cup win on the slopes of Sestriere in February 2025 following her comeback. She took that tally to 106 with her latest wins this season.
To date, she has earned five overall World Cup titles, two Olympic gold medals – along with a silver – and seven world championships.
Despite the disappointment of Tuesday, Shiffrin will have the chance to add to her haul in Milan-Cortina with the individual events of giant slalom and slalom to come.