Mikaela Shiffrin's giant slalom at Milan Cortina ended without a medal but plenty of optimism

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin stood at the start gate atop the giant slalom course at sun-splashed Tofane and made a promise to herself.

''I'm going to do this whole thing here,'' she said.

Considering the path the American star has taken to reach the Milan Cortina Olympics, and to this event in particular, that was enough.

So while the leaderboard near the finish line during Sunday's GS needed to flip to the second page before Shiffrin's name appeared in 11th, the most decorated skier in the history of the sport didn't view her finish as a disappointment.

Disappointment is washing out, which she did four years ago in Beijing. Disappointment is wondering if the speed that once came so easily would ever return while recovering from a harrowing crash during a World Cup start in Killington, Vermont, in late 2024 that left her abdomen punctured and her confidence shaken.

What happened during what Shiffrin called ''the greatest show of GS skiing we've had in a really long time'' was not disappointment. If anything, it was the opposite.

Yes, Shiffrin finished outside the top 10. The way the snow felt underneath her skis and the razor-thin margin that separated the silver medalists from the chasing pack — there was no catching Italy's Federica Brignone on this day — offered evidence she's trending in the right direction heading into slalom, her best event, on Wednesday.

The gap between Shiffrin and co-runners-up Sara Hector of Sweden and Thea Louise Stjernesund was an impossibly tight 0.3 seconds in a discipline that requires skiers to make two runs.

When Shiffrin won gold in the GS in Pyeongchang eight years ago, the gap between silver and 11th was around 1.4 seconds. Four years ago in Beijing, it was nearly 2 seconds. Three weeks ago at a World Cup event in Czechia, where Shiffrin earned her first podium in the GS in two years, it was over 3 1/2 seconds.

On Sunday, Shiffrin was right there. A turn here. A turn there. On a course that was a little flatter and a little less technically demanding than what Shiffrin and the rest of the best skiers in the world usually see — one almost explicitly designed to create a safe and ultracompetitive race — the difference between a medal and the middle was nearly imperceptible.

Shiffrin promised to ''learn'' after slogging down through the slalom in the women's combined last week, when her skis couldn't seem to ''go.'' Perhaps too aware of the perception of an Olympic slump — the Games are the only place she hasn't won in the last eight years — she did her best to refocus and block out the noise.

In her mind, she did just that. She could feel herself taking power from the course. As ''Killing in the Name'' by Rage Against the Machine blasted over the speakers during her second run, Shiffrin felt like she was in the moment and not in her head.

Shiffrin's intensity feels as if it is slowly but steadily ramping up. She wore bib No. 3, a nod to the fact she's back in the top 7 in the world in the GS, something she considered a ''challenging task'' when the season began. It's become doable, but Shiffrin has learned progress isn't linear.

While she continues to dominate slalom — in which she's already clinched her ninth World Cup series title with two races to go — GS is another matter. Sure, Shiffrin's 22 career GS victories are a record. But she hasn't won a GS race since late 2023.

Her climb back up the GS rankings has been fueled by consistency. The ''lights-out speed'' she knows is required to finish atop the podium doesn't come quite as easily as it did when she was at the peak of her powers. That's fine.

''The task ahead of me for the coming months (and) in the coming years is to try to bring that kind of intensity and fire and to continue to work with the team to find those hundredths (of a second) that it takes to actually win races,'' she said.

That didn't happen under the snowcapped peaks of the Dolomites on Sunday. Maybe on another course, one with a more difficult setup that would allow her to lean in to her experience, things may have played out differently.

''It wasn't like somebody won who wasn't supposed to win,'' Shiffrin said.

Brignone emerged as a deserving champion. Behind her, however, was chaos. Shiffrin doesn't think that's a bad thing.

''(We were all) close and that's how that's how high the competition level, is I think,'' she said. ''That's a beautiful show of our sport on an Olympic stage.''

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