Mikaela Shiffrin opts in to team event, will become second woman to ski six Olympic events

Mikaela Shiffrin arrived on the 2022 Winter Olympics with the purpose of competing in all 5 particular person Alpine snowboarding disciplines, one thing she had by no means completed on the Winter Video games.

She’ll find yourself going one step additional earlier than her time in Beijing is up.

Shiffrin confirmed to Eurosport that she is going to cap off her Winter Video games on February 19 by becoming a member of the USA squad for the primary time within the combined workforce parallel slalom competitors.

“I’m going to do the workforce occasion as properly,” she mentioned following the ladies’s downhill occasion Tuesday. The downhill was Shiffrin’s fourth occasion of the Video games, one she had by no means earlier than contested on the Olympics.

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The 26-year-old American had already dedicated to Thursday’s girls’s mixed occasion, through which she is the defending silver medalist.

Just one lady, Petra Vlhova of Slovakia, has ever entered six Alpine snowboarding occasions at a single Olympics. She did so 4 years in the past in PyeongChang, the primary Video games to incorporate the combined workforce occasion. Vlhova left Beijing forward of schedule to deal with an ankle damage, however not earlier than successful her first Olympic gold medal within the girls’s slalom.

Issues haven’t gone practically as properly for Shiffrin on the Yanqing Alpine Snowboarding Heart. Her finest end so far is ninth within the super-G, to go together with the primary two DNFs (slalom and big slalom) and end exterior the highest 10 (18th in downhill) of her Olympic profession.

Nevertheless, she’s now given herself two probabilities to not depart Beijing empty-handed. Shiffrin shall be a gold medal favourite within the mixed occasion, and her presence within the workforce occasion places the U.S. within the dialogue for a medal there. She is going to probably compete alongside Paula Moltzan, who completed eighth within the girls’s slalom. Luke Winters is the one American entered into the boys’s slalom on Wednesday.