Skier Shiffrin closes Games with ‘most beautiful memory’

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin leaves China without medals, but nevertheless she says she closes the Winter Games with her “best memory”. In the mixed country competition in the parallel slalom, she missed a medal with the American team (fourth). “I’ve had a lot of disappointing moments here, but today was my favorite memory of these Winter Games,” said Shiffrin. “My teammates got me through this event.”

Shiffrin was one of the intended stars at the Games. However, the alpine skier, who took gold in the slalom and giant slalom in 2014 and 2018 respectively, was unable to live up to the high expectations. In the five individual events she competed in, she failed to finish three times. On the super-G (ninth) and descent (eighteenth), Shiffrin was a long way from the medals.

It resulted in a lot of negative messages for the Americans through social media. Shiffrin shared some of those “hate posts” with her followers on Instagram to show what she’s dealing with. The winner of 73 World Cup competitions tried to get rid of all that negativity on the track. You have to get up again after every setback, was the message that Shiffrin always proclaimed.

“Every person has to deal with setbacks and difficult periods in their life. It’s about how you deal with them. That is the most important thing I take with me from the past two weeks. I am grateful that I was given a platform to talk about this say and maybe even teach people something.”

Still, the critical stories in the media and especially the hate messages via social media had hurt her, acknowledged Shiffrin. “Sometimes people can be so mean that you don’t really want to get out of bed. Or even exist anymore. I don’t want to talk to people like that. I hope I never meet them either. If I do, I’m sure that they won’t say what they’re writing online now.”