{"id":792884,"date":"2019-02-09T17:03:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T00:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=358912"},"modified":"2019-02-09T17:03:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T00:03:51","slug":"mikaela-shiffrin-responds-to-criticism-by-vonn-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/mikaela-shiffrin-responds-to-criticism-by-vonn-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikaela Shiffrin responds to criticism by Vonn, Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Mikaela Shiffrin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A minor spat erupted between Vail\u2019s megastars of World Cup skiing, Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, on Saturday, as the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Are, Sweden, neared the end its first week.<\/p>\n

On Friday, The Associated Press reported that\u00a0 Vonn and Bode Miller, the two-time men\u2019s World Cup champion with 33 World Cup wins who is working the world championships for television, both questioned Shiffrin\u2019s decision<\/a> to skip Friday\u2019s Alpine\u00a0super-combined and Sunday\u2019s downhill.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe could have won everything,\u201d Vonn said of Shiffrin to AP. \u201cI\u2019m a racer and I want to race in every single race that I possibly can,\u201d Vonn added. \u201cI respect her decision. It\u2019s obviously her decision. But she has the potential and 100 percent the capability of getting a medal in all five disciplines. So I don\u2019t personally understand it. \u2026 Hopefully, I\u2019m sure, she will get two golds in GS and slalom.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Shiffrin responded on Instagram.<\/p>\n

In part, Shiffrin wrote, \u201cMy goal has never been to break records for most (World Cup) wins, points or most medals at world champs. My goal is to be a true contender every time I step into the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vonn responded in the Instagram comments section of Shiffrin\u2019s post, in part, saying, \u201cWhat we said was a compliment, that you are capable of winning medals in all events. No one said it\u2019s easy, Bode and I both know that as winners in all five disciplines. So stick with your decision and go be you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shiffrin and scheduling<\/h3>\n

As Shiffrin has expanded her repertoire from her technical base to speed, she\u2019s surprised a lot of the world with her progress with four wins in downhill and super-G. What\u2019s more, she\u2019s won all three World Cup super-Gs in which she\u2019s entered in 2018-19 and won the world title in the discipline on Tuesday in Are.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the quick success, Shiffrin has had some bumps along the road. Last season, she said she overdid her competition schedule in the buildup to and during the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She added a full weekend of speed events in Cortina, Italy, on January 2018, finishing third and seventh in two downhills and DNF\u2019ing in super-G.<\/p>\n

When she returned to tech events, she DNF\u2019d during the Kronplatz, Italy, GS and the Lenzerheide, Switzerland, slalom, right before the Olympics. At the Olympics, Shiffrin was planning to compete in all five events, a plan that was scotched by weather delays.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the weather forced the GS and slalom into back-to-back days. Shiffrin\u00a0won the gold in the giant slalom but finished fourth in the slalom, where she was the defending Olympic champion. (She also earned silver in the super-combined.)<\/p>\n

After the season, Shiffrin and her camp made the decision to pare back the schedule a little bit.<\/a>\u00a0In particular, she said at the season opener in Soelden, Austria, last October, \u201cAll disciplines, but not every single race \u2014 the plan is every slalom and GS like last year and some key speed races which I feel I can perform well in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the 2018 Olympics, she has entered 23 World Cup and one worlds events. In those 24 starts, she\u2019s won 16 times, had seven top-five finishes and that 24th result, her \u201cworst,\u201d was a ninth-place finish in one of the Lake Louise downhills back in December.<\/p>\n

That run of results seems to justify Shiffrin\u2019s decision outlined in her Instagram post.<\/p>\n

Vonn and Shiffrin<\/h3>\n

While comparisons between Vonn and Shiffrin are natural, given their ties to Vail and their prodigious career World Cup win totals \u2014 Vonn has 82; Shiffrin 56 \u2014 they are different athletes and people. Given that Shiffrin comes from a tech background, the more apt comparison for her in American skiing history is Miller, not Vonn, who started as a speedster.<\/p>\n

Yes, locals remember Miller for his go-for-broke, sometimes-harrowing, yet-ultimately thrilling rides down Birds of Prey in Beaver Creek in downhill, but Miller started from a tech background. Miller\u2019s first eight World Cup wins were either in GS or slalom. His first two world championships gold medals were in GS and combined in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 2003. (Downhill and super-G world titles come in Bormio, Italy, in 2005.)<\/p>\n

Miller, who started his World Cup career in 1997, finally got his first career World Cup speed wins in Lake Louise in 2004 with both the downhill and super-G.\u00a0 By comparison to Miller, Shiffrin is transitioning a little bit faster \u2014 she started on the World Cup on March 11, 2011, and captured her first downhill at Lake Louise on Dec. 2, 2017. If you\u2019re wondering,\u00a0Vonn\u2019s first World Cup start was Nov. 18, 2000, and her breakthrough in tech was in Levi, Finland, on Nov. 15, with a slalom win, roughly eight years.<\/p>\n

However one is transitioning, from speed to tech or vice versa, it takes a while, and everyone\u2019s comfort levels are different.<\/p>\n

With a combined 136 World Cup wins, both Vonn and Shiffrin have unquenchable competitive fires. However, they have different personalities. Vonn speaks her mind more often and wears her emotions on her sleeve, and ski fans love her for that. Shiffrin is a little quieter and certainly seems less emotional, particularly at the finish of a race, when she doesn\u2019t react immediately, instead committing the run to memory, and she has legions of admirers as well.<\/p>\n

And these differences probably led to this to-do.<\/p>\n

In the greater scheme of things, this too shall pass as ski-racing fans watch both go for history in the next week. Vonn competes in her final race on Sunday, the downhill, while Shiffrin runs in the GS on Thursday and the slalom on Saturday.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mikaela Shiffrin. A minor spat erupted between Vail\u2019s megastars of World Cup skiing, Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, on Saturday, as the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Are, Sweden, neared the end its first week. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that\u00a0 Vonn and Bode Miller, the two-time men\u2019s World Cup champion with 33 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-792884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 18:10:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}