Over the course of a jam-packed January on the World Cup, Mikaela Shiffrin captured six wins and eight podium appearances, but the unusually grueling schedule may have caught up with her in recent days.
Shiffrin was leading after the first run of today’s slalom in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, but missed a gate and failed to finish. It was her third DNF in the last four races.
Shiffrin was going for her sixth straight slalom win and could have clinched the season slalom title with two slalom races remaining on the schedule. Racing for the 13th time in 32 days going back to Dec. 28, she looked every bit the dominant slalom racer she has been and was leading by more than a second near the bottom of the course until the mishap occurred.
“At the end of the course with less energy in my legs, I wasn’t able to make that recovery I needed to pull off what I was trying to do,” Shiffrin told an interviewer on the NBCSN telecast of the race. “I’m for sure disappointed — a couple of inches to the right and I would have been fine — but that happens.”
Shiffrin is known for craving time away from racing to focus on training, but while she was racing downhill and super-G last weekend in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, the slalom skiers had time to train that she did not.
“During that period when we were just racing every other day (slalom and giant slalom races in early January), we just kept going into the next race,” Shiffrin said. “I wasn’t getting that much training but nobody was. Now, going against some girls that are not doing speed (races), it’s a little bit harder to stay on top of that.”
Shiffrin now will get some time off before her next race, the giant slalom at the Olympics on Feb. 12.
“I’m really excited to get some time to train,” Shiffrin said. “It feels like it’s been weeks since I actually had any solid, focused training days. I’m really looking forward to some rest and some training and then going to the Olympics.”
