Mikaela Shiffrin still on course to ski five events in Beijing despite minor back ailment setback

Mikaela Shiffrin professes that she still intends to race in all five individual alpine skiing events at the Beijing Olympic Winter Games. It is an ambitious game plan, but one that the versatile U.S. ski racing star is capable of pulling off if everything goes smoothly.

“It is still a very aggressive game plan and the short answer is that I don’t know if that will work, but that is still the plan to compete in all events, or as many as I can qualify in,” Shiffrin said, responding to a question from Around the Rings.

“I’m planning to race everything and we’ll have to adjust the schedule from there – we’ll know more a lot closer to the Games,” she said.

The three-time overall World Cup champion and double Olympic gold medalist asserts that the blueprint has not changed despite her dealing with back pain and enough discomfort to recently limit her training on home snow in Colorado.

“Coming here, I was a little less concerned about it – it is back to the normal ski racer stiffness that we have, so that’s awesome, and I would say we are through the worst of this whole muscle spasm,” Shiffrin told reporters on a conference call from Levi, Finland, having just arrived in the Finnish Lapland, ahead of two slalom races this upcoming weekend.

The 26-year-old U.S. ski racing sensation also admits that the five-event plan, which was generally the same in the lead-up to PyeongChang 2018, could quickly be altered by uncooperative weather and schedule adjustments, as was the case four years ago in South Korea.

“When we went to South Korea and I’m basing this all off my experience there and knowing that the weather patterns in China look similar, and that was the biggest challenge that we faced,” Shiffrin explained. “I literally showed up in South Korea and raced the giant slalom, still expecting to compete in everything.”

Shiffrin won giant slalom gold, but then ended a disappointing fourth as the slalom favorite, the next day. She was greatly fatigued after a revamped race schedule and her presence required at an evening medal ceremony, held a considerable distance from the competition venue.

The U.S. athlete added a second medal, a silver in the Alpine combined, but then opted to forego the downhill and super-G races.

“After the slalom, I realized just how exhausting the previous six days had been, and at that point had to make a decision that wasn’t really an option, only on paper, but realistically it wouldn’t be safe to race the super-G or downhill at that point,” Shiffrin said.

“We regrouped and changed the program and it could be very similar in China – if there are schedule changes, I’m hoping to roll with the punches without exerting as much energy as four years ago,” she added. “It’s easy to say, but it’s a lot harder to do when you’re there and stressed.”

The Great Unknown of the Chinese race courses

Shiffrin, who claimed her first Olympic gold medal in Sochi 2014 as a teen-ager, will be entering the start house at a third Olympics in Beijing.

Like her fellow competitors, she’ll be facing the great unknown and uncertainty of competing on courses at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center that are unseen and untested by international racers. World Cup test events have been cancelled due to travel restrictions into China.

Shiffrin says that watching POV or drone footage of the courses might help, but the terrain and venue still remains uncharted territory.

“Nobody has been there and it seems like there has been a POV video and different pictures distributed around the whole World Cup, so this is probably what I’ve seen,” Shiffrin said. “I find it to be helpful, but it is not the same as being there.

“Generally, with the speed side (downhill and super-G), what I’ve seen is that the athletes pay a lot closer to the POV’s,” she said. “It’s like a virtual training session and maybe can get more out of that in a place that you’ve never been.

“We can look and try to imagine what it will be like in person, but it definitely is a hard thing to do when you’ve never seen the track before,” she added. “It’s nice to have some pictures and get some lay of the land.”

For the moment, Shiffrin’s focus is on Levi and trying to win another reindeer, as is traditionally awarded to the champion at the northern Finnish Lapland resort.

If she can attack gates fast and agile enough for at least one victory in two slaloms this weekend – on a course where she has been victorious four times previously – she will equal Swedish icon Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 46 wins in one World Cup discipline. While Shiffrin’s dominance has come in slalom, Stenmark accomplished his feat in giant slalom.

Two victories, and it will be yet another record, all of Shiffrin’s own.

Follow Brian on Twitter - @brian_pinelli