- - Winter Olympics: More heartbreak for Mikaela Shiffrin in combined ski

Jeff Eisenberg February 10, 2026 at 9:04 AM

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USA's Mikaela Shiffrin reacts in the finish area after competing in the slalom run of the women's team combined event. (Stefano RELLANDINI / AFP via Getty Images) (STEFANO RELLANDINI via Getty Images)

MILAN — Breezy Johnson is the newly crowned queen of the downhill, a hard-charging risk taker wired to find the most direct line down a mountain and attack it.

Mikaela Shiffrin is the greatest slalom skier of all time, a master of technique who excels at making the tightest possible turns to save precious nanoseconds.

This American power duo entered Tuesday’s women’s team combined event as the unequivocal favorites to capture gold. And yet at the end of a long afternoon of racing, another pair of skiers was standing atop the medal stand.

Johnson posted the fastest time in the downhill portion of the competition by six hundredths of a second, but Shiffrin surprisingly was unable to hold the lead several hours later in the slalom. As a result, the two Americans settled for fourth place, more than three tenths of a second behind gold medalists Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria.

Shiffrin appeared uncharacteristically hesitant on the course, taking turns rounder than she normally does and quickly losing the cushion she had over the Austrian team. She lunged across the finish line, glanced at her time and then stared in disbelief when she realized it was not enough to keep her and Johnson on the medal stand.

Shiffrin’s time in the slalom was just the 15th fastest of the day. The only silver lining for USA Skiing was that it did allow Americans Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan to climb up to third place and secure bronze medals.

Before the race, Johnson tried to ease the mental burden on Shiffrin by reminding her lifelong friend that she had already won the downhill at these Olympics.

“Listen, there's no pressure on my side,” Johnson told Shiffrin. “I already have my Olympic gold."

Even so, Shiffrin was clearly heartbroken. TV cameras captured her embracing Johnson and apologizing at the finish line.

For Shiffrin, Tuesday’s race is a rocky start to what she hopes will be a redemptive Winter Games for her. Shiffrin was the favorite to win gold in a minimum of three of the six events she entered in Beijing four years ago, but the most accomplished World Cup skier of all-time unfathomably came home with three DNFs and without a single medal.

Mere seconds into her defense of her 2018 Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom, Shiffrin lost her edge making a turn, skidded across the snow and missed the fifth gate. She made a similar error at the top of the slalom course in Beijing. It was the skiing equivalent of watching LeBron James go scoreless in an NBA Finals or Tom Brady throw six interceptions in a Super Bowl.

Shiffrin endured more hard times in November 2024 when a horrific crash in Killington, Vermont, sent her somersaulting over her skis and left her with a puncture wound in the abdomen. She expected to power through her recovery in time to return to competition in a couple months, but the post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the crash was far more debilitating than she expected.

In a first-person account of the ordeal in The Players Tribune last May, Shiffrin described involuntarily stopping in the middle of training runs and not being able to get her body to move like it needed to.

“It was almost as though I was no longer in control of my body,” she wrote.

Shiffrin eventually fought her way back from those setbacks and returned to her previous level. On Feb. 23, 2025, she became the first skier to win 100 career World Cup races. She has continued to stack up victories this season ahead of the Olympics.

She’ll now look to regain her form before her signature event, the slalom, on Feb. 18.

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Source: “AOL Sports”