Mikaela Shiffrin makes coaching adjustment ahead of Beijing Olympic Games

With simply three weeks till the Olympics start, Mikaela Shiffrin has dismissed longtime coach and coach Jeff Lackie, in response to Ski Racing Media. Lackie advised Ski Racing Media on Monday that he was relieved of his duties on account of contracting COVID-19 after touring to his house in Toronto. He had returned to Canada whereas Shiffrin was quarantining and recovering from the virus herself.

“I’m proud to say we developed an all-around skier who was extremely aggressive in all occasions,” Lackie described his now-former athlete to Ski Racing Media.

“She nonetheless has much more to perform. I want her and the group the very best of luck and hope issues go effectively in China.”

The transfer comes only a week after Shiffrin moved previous Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark for many profession World Cup victories in a single self-discipline together with her forty seventh slalom victory in Schladming, Austria, on Jan. 11. Lackie primarily labored with Shiffrin on energy and conditioning and within the pace disciplines throughout his six-year tenure.

“It’s necessary that Mikaela has a group round her that’s going to have the ability to present what she wants, particularly within the lead-up to one thing as traumatic because the Olympic Video games,” Lackie mentioned.

“So, the choice was made to exchange me, and I’m extremely happy with what I used to be capable of accomplish with Mikaela over the previous six years.”

The transfer was confirmed by Jesse Hunt, the Alpine director for the U.S. Ski Crew.

“Given the continuing COVID-19 challenges, and with Jeff being again in Canada for a number of weeks now, it’s been determined that he is not going to return to Crew Shiffrin main as much as Beijing,” Hunt advised Ski Racing Media. He additionally mentioned that Shiffrin will work carefully with the U.S. ladies’s pace workers within the lead-up to the Video games and in Beijing.

“Mikaela has been crossing over into pace and dealing with the ladies’s pace coaches for various years now,” Hunt mentioned.

“She is assured within the pace workers and enjoys working with them.

Coley Oliver, a coach with the U.S. ladies’s Europa Cup program, will substitute Jackie.

“Coley will be part of and help the group the place he’s wanted,” Hunt added. Shiffrin’s workers additionally includes of Mike Day, her private head coach, and her mom, Eileen Shiffrin.

Shiffrin plans on racing all 5 particular person occasions on the Olympics for the primary time however didn’t compete in Zauchensee final week and also will sit out from the downhill and super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Jan. 22-23 to give attention to coaching. Her social media exhibits her at the moment at Reiteralm Bergbahnen in Schladming, Austria.

Her subsequent World Cup would be the large slalom in Kronplatz, Italy, on Jan. 25. She is at the moment ranked No. 1 within the general World Cup standings and second in each the slalom and large slalom self-discipline standings.