[A] day after winning gold in skiing’s giant slalom, Vermont-schooled Mikaela Shiffrin missed out on a second medal Friday by dragging while defending her 2014 title in the regular slalom.
The 22-year-old graduate of Burke Mountain Academy vomited violently before her first conservative run and couldn’t make up enough time in her cleaner second try, finishing just off the podium in fourth by 0.08 seconds.
“When you have two races in a row, it’s really important to keep that mental energy stable, and I didn’t really do that,” she told Vermonter Peggy Shinn, a writer for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s website. “I had too much of a peak yesterday and too much of a valley today.”
Shinn agrees: “It came down to nerves,” she emailed us, “and fatigue from yesterday’s emotional high.”
Shiffrin wants to be the first U.S. skier since 1952 Vermont Olympian Andrea Mead Lawrence to nab two same-games victories, and still could do so if she wins either next week’s downhill or alpine combined.
Diggins’ next shot
Stratton’s Jessie Diggins narrowly missed out on winning an Olympic medal three times this week. But for the 26-year-old, tomorrow is another day.
“To have three top-six finishes at the games in totally different events is like a dream come true for me,” Diggins tells TeamUSA.org. “That’s a really good feeling to know that you gave it everything that you had and more than you thought you could give. And yeah, of course you want to medal. But there are other things that are also really important besides the actual hardware.”
The U.S. cross-country women’s next chances to win their first-ever Olympic medal are the 4×5-kilometer relay Saturday and the team sprint Wednesday.
Biesemeyer hits ‘rock bottom’
University of Vermont graduate Tommy Biesemeyer, who sat out the 2014 Olympics with a knee injury, is sidelined again after hurting his right ankle this week.
Unlike Diggins, he’s not happy about it.
“It’s times like these where you’re supposed to be creating a puff piece,” Biesemeyer tell the Washington Post. “You’re supposed to say, ‘I’m going to fight. I’m going to come back stronger than ever.’ It’s bull. I hit rock bottom yesterday in my career.”
Biesemeyer isn’t bitter. The 29-year-old says he’s just being honest.
“When you hear about the Olympics, all you see is the success stories. And that’s not what it’s about in the bigger picture. For all the success stories, there are all the people that fell short that could have done it.”
Jacobellis misses medal by a hair
Stratton Mountain School graduate Lindsey Jacobellis was riding high toward an Olympics snowboard-cross gold medal in 2006, 2010 and 2014, only to falter just before the finish line.
Alas, the 32-year-old did so again Friday, winding up fourth by three-hundredths of a second.
“My friends kept telling me, ‘You could be chasing something that you never get, so why are you passing by all these things that you have achieved?” she says in an NBC video titled “Lindsey Jacobellis Used Sun, Surfing to Rediscover Herself.” “Look back and find the joy in that.”
Previous dispatches: Feb. 13-15
