Shiffrin seeks 3rd Olympic gold

BEIJING (AP) — Bode Miller remembers first seeing Mikaela Shiffrin ski, greater than a decade in the past. She was in her early teenagers, not but sufficiently old to compete on the sport’s prime stage; he already owned a handful of Olympic medals and a pair of World Cup general titles.

The People have been coaching at Golden Peak in Vail, Colorado, and Miller was impressed by the junior throughout the way in which. Her slalom fashion dropped at thoughts Vreni Schneider, a Swiss racer within the Eighties and Nineties who was a three-time Olympic champion.

“Nearly like she wasn’t transferring down the hill. There simply wasn’t the variables that it felt like have been at all times current in my snowboarding, which was this three-dimensional wobble in each path. Appeared like she was simply transferring laterally, simply dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut,” Miller stated in a phone interview with The Related Press, mimicking a metronome’s back-and-forth clicking. “Effortlessly staying in stability.”

Everybody in Alpine snowboarding retains an eye fixed on Shiffrin these days, in fact, and the rest of the world will do so at the Beijing Olympics beginning Monday, when she would be the defending champ in the giant slalom.

Her accomplishments at age 26 embrace three Olympic medals (two golds), 11 world championship medals (six golds), three World Cup general titles and 73 profession race wins (behind solely Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 and Lindsey Vonn’s 82).

“I’m an enormous fan,” Miller stated. “She’s the perfect racer that I’ve ever seen, male or feminine.”

Why?

“She’s bodily spectacular as a ski racer with energy and her basic physiology. She had the fitting upbringing. Nice assist,” stated Miller, whose six Olympic medals are tied for the second most in Alpine historical past. “She simply has plenty of presents to work with. Happily, she has the intangibles that associate up with these rather well. Her tactical data and consciousness is basically robust. She simply doesn’t make the identical errors that different individuals make. And that’s a operate of method, however it’s additionally simply ways. It’s her strategy, her understanding, of methods to get from Level A to Level B shortly sufficient to win with out taking any undue danger.”

___

Mike Day, in his sixth season as Shiffrin’s important coach with the U.S. ski staff, recollects his first probability to look at her: a slalom throughout a youth occasion at Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine.

“Previous to that, I solely ever heard her identify and the lore of ‘Mikaela Shiffrin,’” stated Day, who labored for a ski firm on the time.

“The race remains to be vivid for a few causes. First, her snowboarding was simply phenomenally excessive stage for that age. Technical proficiency and tactical proficiency was mind-blowing. However the second motive was she received the race by 10 or 12 seconds. … I bear in mind saying to a buddy of mine on the hill that day: ‘That woman ought to be snowboarding (within the) World Cup subsequent 12 months, undoubtedly,’” Day stated in a video interview. “I believe I used to be certainly one of one million people who most likely stated the identical factor.”

What makes Shiffrin so profitable?

Why does two-time Olympic gold medalist Ted Ligety describe her slalom as “a textbook of snowboarding method”?

“When Steph Curry shoots a 3 from simply within half courtroom, you’re like, ‘Oooh!’ You and I don’t know what he simply did, however it seems prefer it’s purported to look, and it went in,” Day stated. “It’s simply (being) actually naturally gifted within the occasion, with timing and place and placement of the flip. All of these issues are crucial, in addition to one million different parts — and she or he simply does all of them rather well.”

___

It wasn’t till Mikaela was 16 that Eileen Shiffrin first realized her daughter “is perhaps aggressive at a World Cup stage.”

Little bit of an understatement there.

Mother — who nonetheless serves as a coach — and Patrick Riml, in command of the U.S. Alpine staff then, stood collectively at a coaching camp in Loveland, Colorado, forward of Mikaela’s first full World Cup season in 2011-12.

Riml noticed Olympic medalist Marlies Schild apply every week earlier.

“He actually thought Mikaela could be proper in there along with her. I used to be shocked to listen to him say that. … We simply knew there was a a lot larger pond on the market than what she had been swimming in as much as that time in her life,” Eileen wrote in an e mail to the AP. “Listening to that from Patrick was kind of loopy and made us suppose: Hmmm, possibly she WILL be truly doing this.”

Eileen thinks the way in which she and her late husband, Jeff, confirmed Mikaela and her older brother, Taylor, methods to ski as children influences them on the mountain in the present day.

“She was taught from a younger age to be very disciplined — for higher or for worse. Jeff and I taught Taylor and Mikaela that, approach earlier than we even thought of they could race, largely for security’s sake on the hill,” Eileen wrote. “But in addition, Jeff was such a phenomenal skier; he needed to share the enjoyment of carving these stunning turns he made. … They developed comparable type.”

___

When Shiffrin took on the game’s elite, she shortly made an impression.

First World Cup podium at 16; first victory at 17; first Olympic gold at 18.

That’s about ability, definitely, however one thing else, too.

“You may see instantly she was proficient and had one thing greater than ‘regular’ individuals, than ‘regular’ athletes,” stated Marta Bassino of Italy, who received the World Cup large slalom title final 12 months.

So how is Shiffrin distinctive?

U.S. Alpine Director Jesse Hunt praises her for being “proficient, proficient” and “a extremely exhausting employee” and possessing an enviable “capability to compete.”

Keely Cashman, a Californian making her Winter Video games debut, finds that Shiffrin “at all times is tremendous calm and picked up, which is one thing that I want to have on race day.” One other first-time Olympian, River Radamus of Colorado, notes “how swish she makes it look and the way simple she makes it look.”

Mauro Pini, a coach for Petra Vlhova, the Slovakian who won last season’s World Cup overall title and is second to Shiffrin within the present standings, contemplated the query and supplied a easy evaluation of the American: “She doesn’t do something totally different. She does it higher.”

___

AP Sports activities Author Andrew Dampf contributed to this report.

___

Extra AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports