Mikaela Shiffrin Skiis Out in Slalom Again - Someone please explain what's going on?

This episode shows you what a great person Sofia Goggia is. But it also tells how much Shiffrin is liked by her peers.

Mikaela Shiffrin says she nearly cried after spotting a motivational message on the skis she borrowed from an Italian skier

Respectfully, she is the best ever and it's not close. She wins (not just top 3, wins) roughly 50% of the races she enters. with all the variables in skiing, nobody is close to her.  She seamlessly  transitions to speed events and wins almost immediately.  She wind at Worlds. She wins at Olympics.  If you want to jot this down on a list of single Olympic chokes, that's fair.  But she has done more than any skier and in almost half the time.

I was hoping not to open the "that's not a sport" can of worms [insert Fishing, NASCAR, Darts, Bocce and Pickle Ball here] in my response.

But...since it's open, think of the difference between a downhill versus slalom skier as being at least as great as the difference between a butterflier and breastroker. Hope that helps.

Four threads on this running website and this is evidence of Biles lack of support in the face of failure? Dude, you need to get out more.

So I suppose the next question is, should these individuals, likely all 10 of them, not be entitled to their opinion?

This is why, as a card carrying liberal, I have a hard time understanding wokeness. What is the endgame of all this shaming and outrage; to send those who don't subscribe to requisite levels of empathy to some kind of reprograming camp? What's the end game?

Like we see with the pandemic, elections, the environment, etc., there are just some people who will never "see the light" and they never will, no matter how outraged you get.

Right because extreme views don’t exist anywhere else on the internet.

No, she's not. She's still well behind Stenmark and hasn't even passed Vonn yet. She may certainly be doing more faster, but so did Tiger and he's stuck a 3 majors behind Jack...so it's not a guarantee she catches either. She is absolutely a great skier, but she is certainly not the greatest ever. If she had a career ending injury tomorrow, no one would call her the female GOAT.

Same with the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Consensus was it was a good performance but you get a few of the right wing grifters on Twitter playing their character (like they did with Biles) and suddenly it feeds the hunger of the outrage seeking crowd.

I was definitely supportive of Biles, but my one reservation is that she let down her team. Shiffrin, on the other hand, is skiing for herself and her mistakes don't deprive teammates of metals.

With that said, Biles was a survivor of sexual abuse and basically was trying to single-handedly wrest the power in gymnastics away from USAG, who are basically a bunch of abusers. She crumpled under that enormous pressure that very few athletes have had to bear. Shiffrin doesn't have that kind of pressure on her.

Skiing is so unpredictable compared to other sports, though, even gymnastics. You just don't have the same type of dominance in that sport. And success is defined as much by world cup success as Olympic medals. Personally, I seriously hope Shiffrin doesn't take this nightmare too seriously - skiing on fake snow in anti-Covid hell. I really hope she can let it go and finish her career with more success.

I think the reason is the loss of her dad.

She turned to him to get advice and tell her what was wrong.   He would follow her was her photographer.

When he passed, my gut tells me she thought about not skiiing anymore.   kinda like mj.   her posse convinced her to live her life.

on the first debacle when nbc would leave her alone, I thought her answer was odd.  "processing the last 15 years."   I'm guessing but she was told to ski a certain daredevil way where u cut as close as u can and trust the line.

with this fake snow and lack of test runs, where so many skiers were dnfing.. it was more prudent to leave margin for error.   dad was not there to give her this advice.   she didn't have the sounding board anymore and she lost faith.   gotta commit and be in totally belief.   parents need to let go, so the kids can be independent without them.

No way to ultimately decide who is "greater" (Stenmark, Vonn or Shiffrin - or Aamodt, Moser-Pröll, Maier, Hirscher, Schneider, Girardelli, Pärson...).

But Shiffrin has very strong arguments on her side. For example she won her fourth downhill in the world cup, is the only skier who has won four straight world titles in a single event, has won eight global titles in all events beside downhill and so on.

The only relevant comparisons are Vonn and Moser-Proll. We don't compare men and women in other sports. Why do we need that in skiing? (And Schneider and Parson are not GOAT candidates.)

I agree that this is a major factor.  She was 24 when her dad died, and that's still a pretty young age for such a major loss.  At 24, Shiffrin's own brain still hadn't finished developing yet. I was 24 when my first parent died, and for a very long time I felt like I'd been run over by a truck,  had my heart ripped out of my chest, and been beaten in the head with a two-by-four. 

It's only been two years now since Shiffrin's father died. In grief time, which is very different to chronological time, that's not that long.  Plus, the anniversaries of deaths of close loved ones are often very hard on those left behind.  Fact is, the anniversary of  Jeff Shiffrin's death was just two days before the Winter Olympics opened. This has to be a big factor. No matter how mentally and physically healthy and fit a person is, or how resilient and disciplined, there's no getting around  the toll that grief can take. Especially grief over the loss of a beloved parent who was an emotional mainstay and a bedrock source of a support in a young person's life from her earliest memory. 

And for sure they are candidates.

Your post is the #1 problem America faces. The default position by many people in this country is to look for victimization / racism when it doesn't exist.

The cases are all totally different.

1) Yes, some people criticized Biles because she quit the competition. Shiffrin obivouslly did not quit the competition. And yes I'll admit that both sports are dangerous but vaulting with the yips is probably more dangerous than skiing slalom.

2) Near universal criticism of Sha'Carri? What are you talking about. I advocated that she be put in the games individually and certainly the 4 x 100 as did many. And virtually everyone praised her for being so authentic and real.

Because the question is asked in the context of a female skier. Obviously an elite female skier is not going to be better or anywhere close to her male counterparts, so it's impossible for a female skier to be the best of all time. One could argue a female skier or other sport athlete could be more accomplished, but certainly not better. If you can't beat the men you can't be better.

I just read that she's distantly related to Lalo Schifrin, composer of the Amityville Horror theme.

She has regained her lead of Vlhova after two solid races over the weekend.

Shiffrin pads World Cup lead in giant slalom won by Worley

And now, she is the four-time World Cup winner.

Shiffrin back at skiing's summit after Olympic struggles