Olympics
American alpine star Mikaela Shiffrin returned to the top of the Olympic podium Wednesday, winning gold in the women’s slalom at the Milano Cortina Winter Games and ending an eight-year Olympic medal drought. According to reporting from the Associated Press, the 30-year-old delivered two commanding runs in Cortina d’Ampezzo to finish 1.50 seconds ahead of the field. She carried a strong lead from the first run and then sealed the victory with what AP described as an “exquisite” second run that extended her margin decisively.
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Bleacher Report data shows Shiffrin’s combined winning time was 1:39.10, ahead of Switzerland’s Camille Rast(1:40.60) in silver and Sweden’s Anna Swenn‑Larsson (1:40.81) in bronze. Shiffrin had already set the tone early in the race. She posted the fastest opening run at 47.13 seconds—nearly a full second quicker than the next-closest competitor, before backing it up with a clean final descent.
The victory marked Shiffrin’s fourth Olympic medal overall and her first since the 2018 PyeongChang Games, where she won gold in giant slalom and silver in combined. Her Olympic journey began even earlier, when she captured slalom gold as a teenager at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Since 2018, however, Olympic success had eluded her. She left the Beijing 2022 Games without a medal and entered Cortina still searching for a podium finish. Earlier in these Games, she placed 11th in giant slalom and narrowly missed a medal in the team combined event.
As reported by the AP, Shiffrin showed visible emotion at the finish, crouching in the snow before being embraced by fellow medalists and later sharing a moment with her mother and longtime coach, Eileen. The result also reinforced slalom as Shiffrin’s signature discipline. Her winning time Wednesday was the fastest recorded by a women’s Olympic slalom champion since 2018, according to Bleacher Report statistics.
With the victory, Shiffrin not only closed a difficult Olympic chapter but also completed a full-circle moment in her career, returning to the top of the sport’s biggest stage in the event that first made her an Olympic champion more than a decade ago.
If Shiffrin walked away with nothing from Cortina, I would imagine she herself would be wondering why I am doing all of this training? For what? Now that she has a gold, we will have her sign on for at least one more year contract with Atomic and the US Alpine Ski Team.