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American skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin will leave the 2022 Beijing Olympics without a medal.
As D’Arcy Maine of ESPN noted, she was part of the United States team that finished in fourth place in Sunday’s mixed team parallel skiing event. Her teammates were Paula Moltzan, River Radamus and Tommy Ford, and they lost to Norway in a tiebreak for the bronze medal.
“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.”
Austria won the gold medal, while Germany took home silver.
The team event features skiers going head-to-head in slalom races, and Shiffrin won her opening-round race against Slovakia before losing to Italy in the quarterfinals, Germany in the semifinals and Norway in the bronze-medal showdown.
However, she completed all the races after notching Did Not Finish results in the grand slalom, slalom and combined races.
She also finished ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill.
It appeared as if she was going to take home a medal in the final individual alpine skiing event of the Games in the women’s alpine combined. She impressed in the downhill run and put herself in position to capture the gold with her specialty in the slalom.
Instead, she skied out of the race that Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin ended up winning.
Shiffrin notably sat slumped over on the side of the course after the individual slalom competition in disbelief when she also skied out of that one. While it was an emotional scene, she also received plenty of support during the Games.
She opened up about what that meant, notably saying she was thankful for “the kindest words I can ever imagine.”
Despite a disappointing showing in Beijing, she is still one of skiing’s all-time greats with three Olympic medals, 11 world championship medals, three World Cup titles and 73 World Cup race victories. Maine noted she needs just one more Olympic medal to tie Julia Mancuso for the most medals by an American woman in alpine skiing.
Alas, that medal will have to wait for the 2026 Olympics.
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