Mikaela Shiffrin Redefines Olympic Legacy With Slalom Gold

Mikaela Shiffrin can now leave her Olympics demons behind. In her final Olympic race of the Milano Cortina Games, the slalom in Cortina d’Ampezzo, she won by 1.50 seconds — the largest margin in an alpine skiing event since 1998. A near-slip in her first run still left her 0.82 seconds ahead of Germany’s Lena Duerr, the biggest first-run lead in an Olympic slalom since 1960, and after two skiers before her failed to finish in the second run she skied cleanly to a combined time of 1 min., 39.10 sec.

Her result followed a disappointing 15th-place finish in the slalom portion of the alpine team combined on Feb. 10 in Cortina, which cost her and downhill partner Breezy Johnson a medal. The underperformance jarred expectations given her record: winner of 71 World Cup slalom races, an Olympic slalom gold in 2014, and a record 108 World Cup firsts overall; this season she had won seven of eight World Cup slaloms.

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