MILAN — Halfway through Tuesday’s women’s team combined event, the American power duo of Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin could not have been in a stronger position.
Johnson posted the fastest time in the downhill portion of the competition, providing the greatest slalom skier of all time a cushion of six-hundredths of a second.
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What happened next was another all-too-familiar Shiffrin collapse on an Olympic stage, one that will surely evoke memories of her nightmarish Winter Games in Beijing four years ago. It wasn’t just that the 30-year-old American failed to hold the lead. She wasn’t even able to keep herself and Johnson on the podium.
Shiffrin’s time in the slalom was just the 15th fastest among the 18 women who were able to complete the course. As a result, she and Johnson plummeted to fourth place, more than three-tenths of a second behind gold medalists Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria. Emma Aicher and Kira Weidle-Winkelmann of Germany took silver, while Americans Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan secured bronze.
The disappointing performance from Shiffrin denied Johnson what would have been her second medal of these Olympics. Only two days after she won Olympic gold in the women’s downhill, Johnson once again was in the form of her life on Tuesday, identifying the most direct line down the mountain and attacking it fearlessly.
Between the downhill and slalom portion of the competitions, Johnson tried to ease the mental burden on Shiffrin by reminding her lifelong friend that she already would be returning home with some hardware.
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“Listen, there’s no pressure on my side,” Johnson told Shiffrin. “I already have my Olympic gold.”
Judging by the way Shiffrin skied, it looked like the pressure affected her. Shiffrin appeared uncharacteristically hesitant on the course, taking turns rounder than she normally does and quickly losing the cushion she had over Raedler and Huber.
After lunging across the finish line, Shiffrin stared at her time in disbelief when she realized it was not enough to keep her and Johnson on the medal stand. TV cameras captured Shiffrin embracing Johnson and apologizing at the finish line.
“Didn’t quite nail it,” she said after her run. “I didn’t quite find a comfort level that allowed me to produce full speed.
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“So, I’m going to have to learn what to do, what to adjust in the short time we have before the other tech races.”
For Shiffrin, Tuesday’s race is a rocky start to what she hopes will be a redemptive Winter Games for her. Shiffrin was the favorite to win gold in a minimum of three of the six events she entered in Beijing four years ago, but the most accomplished World Cup skier of all time unfathomably came home with three DNFs and without a single medal.
Mere seconds into her defense of her 2018 Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom, Shiffrin lost her edge making a turn, skidded across the snow and missed the fifth gate. She made a similar error at the top of the slalom course in Beijing. It was the skiing equivalent of watching LeBron James go scoreless in an NBA Finals or Tom Brady throw six interceptions in a Super Bowl.
Shiffrin endured more hard times in November 2024 when a horrific crash in Killington, Vermont, sent her somersaulting over her skis and left her with a puncture wound in the abdomen. She expected to power through her recovery in time to return to competition in a couple months, but the post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the crash was far more debilitating than she expected.
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In a first-person account of the ordeal in The Players Tribune last May, Shiffrin described involuntarily stopping in the middle of training runs and not being able to get her body to move like it needed to.
“It was almost as though I was no longer in control of my body,” she wrote.
Shiffrin eventually fought her way back from those setbacks and returned to her previous level. On Feb. 23, 2025, she became the first skier to win 100 career World Cup races. She has continued to stack up victories this season ahead of the Olympics.
Anywhere else, Shiffrin is the greatest slalom skier of all-time, a master of technique who excels at making the tightest possible turns to save precious nanoseconds.
On the Olympic stage, she’s still struggling to recapture that form.
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