Feb. 12 (UPI) — Mikaela Shiffrin placed ninth during the first training running for the women’s downhill event on Saturday.
Shiffrin, 26, finished the longest course in alpine skiing with a time of 1:34.80 after showing strength in the second speed and intermediate portions of the course. She is scheduled to hit the slopes at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center, known as The Rock, on Tuesday for the medal event.
Prisa Nufer, of Sweden, finished the training in first place with a time of 1:33.47 and was followed by Kira Weidle, of Germany, and Christine Scheyer, of Austria, amid a slew of 16 potential disqualifications. The reasoning for the potential disqualifications was not immediately known.
Shiffrin’s training finish shows signs of hope for the athlete and Team USA after she failed to medal during Friday’s super-G race and a disappointing start to the Beijing Games.
The star athlete opened up about the pressures to perform during the Olympics in a post made to Instagram ahead of the training run on Saturday.
“It’s wonderful to train and compete alongside all of these courageous and incredible women, who have overcome so much in their life, just to get here. But being here can really hurt too,” Shiffrin wrote in the post.
“There’s a lot of disappointment and heartbreak going around in the finish area, but there’s also a lot of support.”
Shiffrin, already a two-time Olympic gold medalist, equated the Olympics to a rollercoaster ride and said she was prepared to “hang on tight to the coaster because we have plenty still to come.”
“Sending my love to those who are feeling that striking hurt of defeat… only let it beat you down for a little bit, and then you stand up again and throw a few punches back,” she wrote.
Shiffrin, a Colorado native, has struggled to acclimate to the heavily packed-in, manmade snow on the Beijing course and skied out in both the giant slalom and the slalom, her two strongest events.
According to Accuweather, Beijing experienced flurries of real snowfall on Saturday as the region expected between 3-6 inches of snow through Sunday night.
