USA’s Shiffrin wins Olympic gold medal in slalom event

Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin on Wednesday earned a gold medal in women’s slalom for the first time since 2014. With a combined time of 1:39.10 across her two runs, she beat second-place finisher Camille Rast of Switzerland by 1.5 seconds. Shiffrin overcame fear and adrenaline to notch her win, she said in a social media post.

Shiffrin’s first run down the course at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Center clocked in at 47.13 seconds. Her subsequent run was 51.97 seconds, but her substantial lead from the first run held.

What's her background? Shiffrin has won World Cup races 108 times and holds the most World Championship titles of any skier since World War II, as well as two gold medals from the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics. But the 2014 medal was her only previous Olympic win in women’s slalom. Shiffrin crashed repeatedly at the 2022 Olympics, failing to finish three of her five events.

Dig deeper: Read my report on Olympian Elana Meyers-Taylor’s first bobsledding gold.