Mikaela Shiffrin claimed the gold medal in giant slalom on Thursday in PyeongChang, South Korea, kicking off her second Olympic Games in style.
Shiffrin, the current World Cup champion in the slalom and overall standings, ranked third in the giant slalom coming into the Olympics, and her 1:10.82 first run on Thursday morning was good for second place between Italy’s Manuela Moelgg (1:10.62) and Moelgg’s countrywoman, Federica Brignone (1:10.91). A silver or bronze medal finish would have still been an impressive accomplishment in a discipline that isn’t Shiffrin’s best.
Shiffrin wasn’t going to settle for that.
Almost four hours later, Shiffrin improved upon her first run by a whopping 1.62 seconds, putting up an impressive 2:20.02 total, 0.39 seconds faster than silver medalist Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway, and Italy’s Brignone — who held her spot through the decisive second run — to claim the Olympic crown.
Shiffrin, arguably the best skier on the planet, admitted prior to the Games that the pressure of her extraordinary expectations do weigh on her at times. “I get so nervous; I was throwing up last year,” Shiffrin told The Washington Post. “It’s like, the races I’m supposed to win, I worry about what happens if I don’t. Who am I letting down? My family? The media? What’s the media going to say if I don’t win? I was listening, and I had never really listened to those things before.”
Shiffrin, who discussed winning five gold medals at her debut Olympics in Sochi four years ago, is entered in four more events in the PyeongChang games and will continue her ambitious schedule on Friday, when she looks to defend her 2014 gold medal in slalom — an event in which she’s already won four World Cup titles at the tender age of 22.
