'Didn't quite nail it': Mikaela Shiffrin faces her Olympic curse in Milan Cortina

Mikaela Shiffrin is the winningest athlete in the history of alpine skiing. She's the proud owner of nine world slalom titles, two world giant slalom titles and one world Super-G title. 

She's won five overall alpine world championships and is on track to take home a sixth in 2026. She's the only skier, male or female, to have racked up more than 100 individual race wins. She's Simone Biles; she's Tiger Woods. No one on earth can touch her on the slopes.

Mikaela Shiffrin's Olympic struggles continue in 2026

Except, it seems, at the Olympic Games. After a brilliant teenage debut in 2014 that saw Shiffrin win gold in the slalom, she's struggled to translate her brilliant international form to the Olympic stage. 

Shiffrin took home another slalom gold and a combined silver in 2018, but she's been off the podium ever since. Her 2022 Olympic results make for a sobering read: DNF in the slalom, DNF in the giant slalom, ninth in the Super-G, 18th in the downhill and DNF in the combined. Shiffrin put up all those finishes while well on her way to the 2022 overall world alpine title. They weren't just unexpected results. They were downright baffling.

"The Olympics have been wonderful to me," Shiffrin said, "but they’ve been like a mosquito as well."

That buzzing kicked off again in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Tuesday in the women's team combined race. Shiffrin's teammate Breezy Johnson laid down a blistering downhill run to put them in first place, but Shiffrin —visibly tense — lost their lead on her slalom pass and dropped the pair off the podium into fourth. She hasn't finished lower than second on any slalom race this season; here, however, she finished 15th out of 18 skiers.