CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin appears to be finding her Olympic groove.
Shiffrin finished 11th in the giant slalom on Sunday, Feb. 15 at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics but showed a comfort level she didn’t seem to have during her slalom run in the team combined event last week.
Her combined time in the two-run race was 2:14.42, 0.92 seconds behind Italy’s Frederica Brignone, who collected her second gold medal of these Olympics. But Shiffrin was only 0.30 off the podium, which saw Sweden’s Sara Hector and Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund tie for silver.
Shiffrin is still chasing her elusive fourth Olympic medal, which would tie Julia Mancuso for most by an American woman in Alpine skiing. Her best event, the slalom, is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 18.
‘I was pushing, trying to turn any nervous energy into more, sort of, intensity or taking the power from the course. … And it felt good to push,’ Shiffrin said after the seond run.
Shiffrin is arguably the greatest skier of all time. Her 108 World Cup wins are most by any skier, male or female, and she won three medals, two of them gold, at her first two Olympics.
But she is now 0-for-8 in her most recent Olympic races.
Sh had a disastrous performance in Beijing, skiing out of three races and finishing no better than ninth in an individual event. When she struggled in the slalom portion of the team combined, finishing 15th out of 18 skiers, the questions about whether she had an Olympic bloc began again.
This race, of all races, shows how formidable she remains.
Though one of Shiffrin’s Olympic golds is in GS (2018), she’s been trying to regain her form in the discipline since the scary November 2024 crash that left her with a puncture wound in her obliques and PTSD. Her third-place finish in the final GS race before the Olympics was her first podium in the discipline in two years. She has not won a GS race since December 2023.
‘For me, personally, after returning to racing after the injury last year, and then returning to GS racing, I was so far off,’ Shiffrin said. ‘And I felt like there was no hope to be faster. And then to be here now, just in touch of the fastest women, that’s huge for me. I’m proud of that. There were so many positives from today.’
She has said her giant slalom skiing is getting stronger and stronger, and she showed it on the Olimpia delle Tofane track. Shiffrin put herself in position to make the podium with a solid first run, finishing 0.56 seconds out of third place.
She showed none of the tentativeness she did in the team combined event Tuesday, Feb. 10. She picked up time along the curves of the course, which bodes well for slalom Wednesday. Feb. 18.
