Mikaela Shiffrin finishes with no individual medals at Beijing Olympics after crashing out in last event
U.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin tallied her third did-not-finish (DNF) of the Beijing Olympics on Thursday after she crashed out during the women's combined competition, capping off a disappointing individual performance at this year's Winter Games.
Shiffrin started strong in the downhill, but skied out during the slalom part of the combined event. She attempted to explain what went wrong in a post-race interview with NBC Sports.
"I don't know if it was some combination of like driver error, maybe a small little track in the snow and maybe you can't see it and I just didn't react quick enough or whatever it was, but I don't know," she said Thursday.
"I feel like a joke," she added.
Switzerland's Michelle Gisin and Wendy Holdener took first and second place in the combined event. Italy's Federica Brignone finished third.
Shiffrin is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and six-time world champion, and she claimed 47 World Cup victories in slalom – the latter being the most of any other racer in the discipline. Yet, her Beijing Olympics run fell short of expectations as she was a favorite in all her events.
She finished with two DNFs in giant slalom and slalom, took ninth in super-G and18th place in downhill, and racked up one more DNF on Thursday.
"Beyond walking away from the Games with no medals — no individual medals — the most disappointing thing is I had multiple opportunities to ski slalom on this track," Shiffrin told reporters, "and I, well, you know, failed in all of them."
She gets one last chance to leave Beijing with a medal. She plans to enter the mixed team event on Saturday when the alpine schedule finishes.
