Mikaela Shiffrin, battling chest cold, won historic fourth-straight slalom at World Championships
Mikaela Shiffrin was struggling to breathe and rapidly running out of energy.
Standing at the top of the mountain Saturday ahead of her final slalom run in Are, Sweden, Shiffrin was fighting a chest cold. She struggled in her first run of the day, too, finishing in third place. Halfway down the mountain in that run, she felt like she ran out of air.
“I don’t know how much more I have to give, how much more I can push,” Shiffrin thought after her first run, via the Associated Press.
Yet she knew all she had to give was one more minute — 60 seconds — in the final run.
The 23-year-old went all out.
Shiffrin dominated the second run, beating the field by 0.58 seconds to win the slalom title at the World Championships — her fourth straight win in the event at the World Championships. She’s now the first Alpine skier, male or female, to accomplish that feat.
“I knew I had to fight really hard the second run because Anna and Wendy are so strong,” Shiffrin told NBC Sports after her run. “The girls behind me were also really close. I just figured I have to be tough and try it and I just need 60 seconds to push, and I can do that for 60 seconds.”
Sweden’s Anna Swenn Larson took second place and Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova took third. Shiffrin’s second run ended up being the fastest of the day by 0.62 seconds.
HISTORY MADE.@MikaelaShiffrin becomes the first skier to win four consecutive world titles in the same discipline. #Are2019 pic.twitter.com/fFDt095XGZ
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) February 16, 2019
Even though her mom pulled her aside before the run to check on her — and she collapsed briefly after — Shiffrin said she always wanted to compete, regardless of how she did. After all, she was already there.
“My mom said to me before the second run, ‘You don’t have to do this,’” Shiffrin told NBC Sports. “I was coughing so hard that my stomach was in spasms, and I couldn’t breathe, and then I kept coughing more.
“At what point do you say, ‘No, I can’t do 60 seconds of skiing. I’m out here.’ I want to do it and whether I win or not, I just wanted to try. And when she said, ‘You don’t have to,’ then I was sure that I wanted to.”
Shiffrin, who won a pair of gold medals at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, was extremely emotional after the win — which is completely understandable.
She had just picked up her second gold medal of the event, after winning the Super-G on the opening day, bringing her medal count at the World Championships to five. She is now tied with Ted Ligety as the American with the most gold medals at the World Championships, too.
While she almost wasn’t able to compete, Shiffrin proved yet again on Saturday why she’s one of the best skiers in American history.
“I was just not feeling very good for the whole day, except for the 60 seconds that it mattered,” Shiffrin told the Associated Press.
“In the moments that counted, my team and I were able to focus on the true task and the reason we’re here. That’s something special.”
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