U.S. ski star Mikaela Shiffrin failed to medal Tuesday with teammate Breezy Johnson in the women’s team combined Alpine event, continuing Shiffrin’s run of disappointment at the Winter Olympics.
Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria took gold with a time of 2 minutes 21.66 seconds, Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher of Germany snagged silver (2:21.71) and Jacqueline Wiles and Paula Moltzan of the U.S. took bronze (2:21.91). Watch Moltzan’s slalom run here.
Shiffrin and Johnson finished fourth (2:21.97) in what was the latter’s debut at the Milan Cortina Games.
Shiffrin, 30, skied with “measured” effort and showed “tension,” one NBC announcer said as she traversed the slalom course.
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Johnson congratulated Shiffrin on her “great work” after the run, but it was probably of little consolation.
At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, Shiffrin failed to finish three events and did not medal in any of the six she entered.
The pressure was on again in Italy when Johnson, who won gold in the individual downhill on Sunday, paced the pair into first place in the team downhill portion earlier.
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Shiffrin and Johnson had won the team combined at the world championships last year, heightening expectations for a repeat in the Milan Cortina Games.
Shiffrin has unsurpassed credentials, winning a record 108 World Cup Alpine events. She also won Olympic gold in the slalom in 2014 and the giant slalom in 2018.
But critics haven’t let her live down her disappointment in Beijing.
At the time, she said the setback “makes me second-guess the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about my own skiing and slalom and racing mentally.”
Elevating the drama in her 2026 Olympic debut, Shiffrin had to go last because of long-time pal Johnson’s first-place finish in the morning.
