[A]fter nearly a week of wind delays, Vermont-schooled Mikaela Shiffrin blew away the competition Thursday to win a gold medal in her first 2018 Olympics race.
The 22-year-old graduate of Burke Mountain Academy needed only 2 minutes and 20.02 seconds to top the podium of alpine skiing’s giant slalom.
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“Going into this Olympics, I thought, ‘Yeah, I could come away with multiple medals — I could also walk away with nothing,’” Shiffrin told the Washington Post. “And now I know that I have something, so that’s a really nice feeling.”
Shiffrin is scheduled to next compete Friday, when she defends her 2014 gold in regular slalom. She’ll sit out Saturday’s super-G to rest up for next week’s downhill and alpine combined. If she win again, she’ll be the first U.S. skier to nab two same-games victories since Vermonter Andrea Mead Lawrence in 1952.
Diggins almost medals a third time
For a third time, Stratton’s Jessie Diggins narrowly missed out on winning the U.S. women cross-country ski team’s first-ever Olympic medal. And for a third time, the 26-year-old continue is thrilled.
“I’ve had so many people go, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’” Diggins told TeamUSA.org after eluding bronze in Thursday’s 10-kilometer freestyle by 3.3 seconds. “I’m like, ‘Don’t be sorry. I’m proud of what I did today. To be that close and to be skiing with the best in the world … it’s so awesome.”
Men take alpine tumbles
University of Vermont graduate Tommy Biesemeyer, who sat out the 2014 Olympics with a knee injury, is sidelined again after hurting his right ankle Wednesday.
Biesemeyer found himself replaced in today’s downhill by fellow Green Mountain State teammate Ryan Cochran-Siegle, who himself is no stranger to spills. Cochran-Siegle crashed in his first Olympic race, Tuesday’s alpine combined, and sat out much time between 2013 and 2016 because of injuries.
The power of positive thinking
Barbara Ann Cochran, Cochran-Siegle’s mother and the 1972 slalom gold medalist, now coaches skiers on the mental side of their sport.
“Don’t worry about results,” she tells the Washington Post. “Get what I call the inner climate into a good place emotionally. That is when you start thinking, this is so much fun, I just love — and then you fill in the blank. And then, when they get into the start, if they can smile, that also helps to relieve that tension.”
Now for a second opinion
You might think Stratton Mountain School graduate Lindsey Jacobellis would want to forget how she approached the snowboard-cross finish line and a gold medal at the 2006 Olympics, only to slip and wind up second. But her “mental coach” is urging her to remember.
“What you want athletes to do is say, ‘I’m afraid,’ ” Denise Shull, who also helps Wall Street traders and fund managers harness their emotions, tells the New York Times. “And if they say it, they can use it. If they try to set it aside, it’s lurking around them, interrupting what they normally know how to do.”
