Shiffrin to race first Olympic downhill Tuesday

BEIJING (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin confirmed that she is going to, certainly, race a downhill on the Winter Olympics for the primary time Tuesday. And she or he says she is altering how she thinks about what’s at stake as she prepares for her fourth event in Beijing.

“It’ll be very nice to race tomorrow. However you don’t actually come to the Olympics to really feel good,” Shiffrin mentioned after ending Monday’s second coaching session on the course often called The Rock on the Yanqing Alpine Snowboarding Middle with the Fifteenth-fastest time among the many girls who didn’t miss a gate. “It’s going to be intense and just a little little bit of nerves, for positive.”

One surprising little bit of assist, she mentioned, arrived Sunday, when what was imagined to be one other coaching session was known as off due to heavy snow.

Shiffrin mentioned it was her solely time without work in a span of about 2½ weeks.

“It was good to get some relaxation, some restoration, just a little little bit of type of a energy session in and get the muscle priming,” she mentioned.

The two-time gold medalist in Alpine skiing didn’t end her opening runs in both of her preliminary two occasions, the two-leg large slalom and slalom, earlier than coming in ninth within the super-G, one other race she hadn’t beforehand entered at an Olympics.

As somebody who specialised within the technical disciplines of slalom and large slalom, the pace occasions of downhill and super-G are nonetheless new and works-in-progress for Shiffrin.

She has 47 World Cup victories in slalom — greater than every other individual in any race — and 14 in large slalom, with 4 in super-G and two in downhill.

And though she mentioned, “There’s all the time some a part of you that’s pondering, ‘Perhaps there’s an opportunity,’” in terms of getting a top-three outcome Tuesday, Shiffrin gave some recent perception into her mindset.

“I’m not specializing in the medal anymore. It’s simply attempting to do my finest execution each day. Anyway, that’s my finest shot at a medal. So it’s just a little little bit of perhaps a paradox … that your finest probability to have that efficiency is to cease occupied with the efficiency and to deal with what you’re doing in that second,” the 26-year-old Shiffrin mentioned. “So I’m simply attempting to be current within the second, particularly with the downhill.”

Past that, this time spent doing that occasion figures to assist her in Thursday’s Alpine mixed, which provides the instances from one downhill run and one slalom run. She took residence a silver in mixed on the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.

The downhill champion 4 years in the past, Italy’s Sofia Goggia, was fourth-fastest Monday behind chief Joana Haehlen of Switzerland and figures she is going to be capable to contend for a high end regardless of badly injuring her left knee and leg in a crash throughout a super-G three weeks in the past.

“I didn’t take into consideration the leg in any respect,” Goggia mentioned, “and I feel that was evident.”

___ 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