Mikaela Shiffrin ends Olympic medal drought with slalom gold

Cortina d’Ampezzo – Mikaela Shiffrin won Olympic slalom gold on Feb 18 to end her eight-year Winter Games medal drought and bring some solace to the US ski team.

She claimed the third Olympic title of her career, and her first since giant slalom gold at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, with a rapid combined time of 1min 39.10sec.

The 30-year-old already had a lead of 0.82sec after a first run she said she “nailed” in glorious conditions and that handy cushion enabled her to cruise to victory at Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre.

She finished a whopping 1.50sec ahead of world champion Camille Rast, who took the first medal of these Milano-Cortina Games for the Swiss women’s ski team.

Sweden’s Anna Swenn Larsson rounded out the podium to claim the first Olympic medal of her career.

“Today I showed up for the skiing. I wanted to have two runs with really strong slalom skiing. Now to be through that is a little bit challenging to process,” said Shiffrin.

She added: “I wanted to be free, I wanted to unleash. It’s not easy to do that, but I’ve been so focused every single day... Now, to also get to have a medal is unbelievable.”

Shiffrin has banished memories of both her last Olympics in Beijing – where she failed to pick up a single medal – and her disappointing displays in the team combined and giant slalom in northern Italy.

She came to Cortina as a red-hot favourite to claim at least one gold due to her sensational form this season which has taken her all-time record of World Cup wins to 108.

Shiffrin has already won the slalom title in the World Cup after coming out on top in seven of this season’s races, finishing just 0.14sec behind Rast in Kranjska Gora the one time she did not win.

Gold is a happy ending to a difficult Olympics for both Shiffrin and the US ski team, whose Games were dominated by Lindsey Vonn’s horror crash and leg break in the downhill race which opened proceedings in Cortina.

In Tesero, Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Klaebo won his 10th Olympic gold, extending the record he set earlier at the Milano-Cortina Games.

Klaebo and his Norwegian teammate Einar Hedegart comfortably won the team sprint free event, with Klaebo slowing before the finish line to soak up the applause of the crowd. The US took the silver medal and Italy won bronze.

It was 29-year-old Klaebo’s fifth gold medal of these Games alone, meaning he has won every event he has entered – and he has one more event to go.

The only athlete in Winter or Summer Games history with more Olympic titles is American swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 23 golds.

Klaebo won three golds at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games and another two in Beijing in 2022. He also has a silver and bronze medal from the Beijing Games.

Sweden won the women’s event, taking their fourth gold medal in cross-country skiing at the Games. Switzerland took silver, surging away from a chasing group in the final lap of the race, while Germany won the bronze.

Sweden’s women have dominated cross-country skiing events at these Games, also winning golds in skiathlon, classic sprint and 10km freestyle interval race.

In Livigno, China’s Su Yiming celebrated his 22nd birthday by winning the men’s snowboard slopestyle final to hand his country their first gold medal of the Olympics on Feb 18. Taiga Hasegawa of Japan took silver, while Jake Canter claimed bronze for the US.

Su, the slopestyle silver medallist at Beijing 2022, started with an impressive first run for a score of 82.41 under sunny skies in the Alpine town and could not be caught.

The Chinese rider ripped off his hat and clapped his hands when he realised he had won gold. He shed tears as his coaches and competitors congratulated him. “Let’s go,” yelled Canter.

Said Su: “So many emotions just came up to my head and then started to realise today was my birthday and then my parents are here to support me and my coaches out there, you know – everybody is here to support me.

“The emotions just came and I just couldn’t stop crying.”

The slopestyle contest had been delayed by a day because of a snowstorm on Feb 17.

Su won bronze in the men’s big air last week, having claimed the title in 2022. The 22-year-old said he felt “crazy pressure” in that event as the defending gold medallist.

China got their second gold not long after.

Xu Mengtao retained her title in the women’s freestyle skiing aerials, adding another trophy to a stellar career. Danielle Scott of Australia took the silver, while the bronze went to Xu’s compatriot Shao Qi.

In slopestyle, riders navigate rails and other obstacles and perform aerial tricks to impress the judges with difficulty and originality. The best score from three runs determines the winner.

Mark McMorris, who has three Olympic slopestyle bronze medals, finished eighth after crashing on two of his three runs. The oldest competitor in the field at 32, the Canadian suffered a concussion at the start of his fourth Games and had to skip the big air event.

Meanwhile, the owner of Ukrainian football team Shakhtar Donetsk has donated more than US$200,000 (S$253,000) to skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, after the athlete was disqualified from the Games before competing over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the club said on Feb 17.

The 27-year-old Heraskevych was disqualified last week when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that imagery on the helmet – depicting athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 – breached rules on athletes’ expression at the Games.

He then lost an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport hours before the final two runs of his competition, having missed the first two runs due to his disqualification.

“Vlad Heraskevych was denied the opportunity to compete for victory at the Olympic Games, yet he returns to Ukraine a true winner,” Shakhtar president Rinat Akhmetov said in a club statement.

The amount is equal to the prize money Ukraine pays athletes who win a gold medal at the Games.

Japan’s superb Games continued as Mari Fukada won the women’s slopestyle snowboard on Feb 18, earning their record-equalling fifth gold in Italy.

She earned 87.83 to win a high-scoring event, beating silver medallist and defending champion Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand, who scored 87.48 at Livigno Snow Park. Kokomo Murase of Japan finished with bronze, scoring 85.80.

Their latest title matched their best as hosts at Nagano in 1998 and was their 22nd medal here, extending the record set earlier.
AFP, REUTERS