Shiffrin considered leaving Beijing after failing to finish in her two strongest events. But the Alpine skiing champion chose to soldier on.
BEIJING, China — The 2022 Winter Olympics have come to an end, and for Colorado's Mikaela Shiffrin, it was just one Olympics in which she didn't earn any medals.
It's not that anyone, especially Shifrin, didn't think things would move forward after participating in six events. But in sports, how an athlete ends a race is sometimes more important than how they start.
He didn't start well. Shiffrin slipped on course and failed to finish in the giant slalom and slalom - two of her strongest events.
"I think me and my team, I think we did everything right and it still wasn't working, so there was some puzzle piece missing," she said.
Devastated and doubting her skiing, Shifrin could skip the Olympics. She admits that she considered leaving Beijing after falling short in slalom.
Instead, Shiffrin leaned on the support of her brother, Taylor, who was looking back home in her hometown of Edwards. She said that he tried to put the setbacks in perspective for her, as her father would have done.
So Shifrin did what she knew how to do: She kept running. But she came up with zero medals—not exactly writing the fairy tales that ended Hollywood.
"That movie is not the end," she said. "We didn't win. We fought and then we didn't win."
But even though Shiffrin didn't earn a medal, she earned respect from athletes and fans around the world for staying in the race and even showing off her best moments when she wasn't her best.
"You just need to get up, even though sometimes you may fail to do what you're supposed to. And God knows that failing, even failing at times, doesn't make you fail. Makes — it means you didn't do it today, but you can get up tomorrow and keep going," Shiffrin said.
And in those moments, these Olympics, Shiffrin defined a champion not by medal count, but by backing up, inspiring others, and fighting to race in the sport she loves.
After 20 consecutive days of running and training, Shiffrin is on her way back to Europe to finish the final part of the World Cup season. Shifrin is currently leading in the overall points of the World Cup and could still claim the overall title.