Alpine skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin will race the Beijing 2022 downhill after an encouraging second practice (Sunday’s run was cancelled due to bad weather) at the Yanqing National Ski Centre on Monday (14 February).
The six-time world champion is one of the four women selected by Team USA for the event, along with Jackie Wiles, Alix Wilkinson and Keely Cashman.
After a “solid” run in the first training session when she clocked the ninth best time, the American skied well on the technical sections of the ‘Rock’ course and also took a high jump before the ‘White Face’, but failed to create speed in the second half. The 26-year-old was the 17th fastest skier (out of 45 finishers), posting a time of 1 minute 34.58 seconds, 1.40 seconds slower than the top mark set by Joana Haehlen of Switzerland.
“I feel good, confidence is a funny thing because I’m not really thinking about placing, like results, I just feel confident with my skiing and it’s really nice to be on the downhill skis right now so I feel pretty confident about that,” she said.
Shiffrin has only raced in one downhill (38th place in Lake Louise in December) this season, after not racing the discipline in the 2020/21 World Cup.
“It’s just trying to clean up any section that I can, see if I can go a little bit faster but to be honest it’s the fourth run that I took on downhill skis in two years so I’m just trusting my skiing, like the natural instincts, and for sure, I missed a little bit of speed in some sections also from a lack of doing it,” the Vail-born skier said.
“I really don’t have big expectations performance-wise,” she added. “But I think I have a chance to do a really nice fast run so that’s a good feeling because in Lake Louise I was quite slow there so this is a much better position to be in, it’s possible to be a bit faster in some sections.”
The two-time Olympic champion – along with PyeongChang 2018 gold medallist Michelle Gisin – is one of the favourites for the combined event, which includes a downhill and slalom run and is scheduled for Thursday (17 February).
Combined world silver medallist Petra Vlhova is forced to sit out of the event due to a ankle tendon injury.
The women’s downhill takes place on Tuesday (15 February) at 11:00 local time (4:00 CET, 19:00 PST on Monday).
Coming into Beijing, Shiffrin was targeting an ambitious plan to compete in all five individual events. That schedule also includes the alpine combined (17 Feb), an event that features downhill and slalom.
She may also enter the team event on Saturday 19 February.