{"id":2455650,"date":"2020-03-11T13:48:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T19:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=322409"},"modified":"2020-03-11T13:48:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T19:48:10","slug":"coronavirus-fears-end-world-cup-season-nixing-mikaela-shiffrins-shot-at-a-four-peat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/coronavirus-fears-end-world-cup-season-nixing-mikaela-shiffrins-shot-at-a-four-peat\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus fears end World Cup season, nixing Mikaela Shiffrin\u2019s shot at a four-peat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mikaela Shiffrin took a month-long break from the World Cup season following the death of her father.<\/strong>
Marco Tacca | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Mikaela Shiffrin\u2019s shot at a fourth World Cup overall title is finished after the International Ski Federation canceled this weekend\u2019s women\u2019s World Cup races in Are, Sweden,<\/a> due to COVID-19 concerns. The races were canceled after new recommendations from the Public Health Agency of Sweden.<\/p>\n

The announcement means that Italy\u2019s Federica Brignone will claim the overall with 1,378 points, followed by Shiffrin (1,225) and Slovakia\u2019s Petra Vlhova in third with 1,189 points. Brignone is the first Italian woman to win the World Cup in the 53 years of the circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe health and welfare of the athletes and all other participants, as well as the general public are in the forefront and the priority of FIS and all stakeholders,\u201d the FIS wrote on its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Concerns arose when a member of the sponsor support team at the FIS Alpine World Cup self-quarantined after experiencing symptoms of the Coronavirus in Kvitfjell, Norway. He later tested positive.<\/p>\n

Other members of the support team traveled to Are and were quarantined immediately.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin\u2019s return for naught<\/h2>\n

Mikaela Shiffrin took to Twitter and Instagram on March 5<\/a> to announce she was returning to the World Cup circuit after a month-long absence following the death of her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no promises if I\u2019ll actually be able to race,\u201d Shiffrin said in a six-minute video message that addressed the emotions about her father, Jeff, who died on Feb. 2. \u201cThere is no doubt that we are broken,\u201d she said of her family\u2019s grief. \u201cAccepting this new \u2018reality\u2019 is going to take a long time, and maybe we never truly will, maybe we don\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three remaining races in Are were a scheduled parallel slalom, giant slalom, and slalom.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin said she had trained a little but with difficulty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a slow process, I have struggled with being able to maintain my focus,\u201d said the two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time defending overall World Cup champion. \u201cBut it has been therapeutic to be on the mountain. I\u2019ve found training to be a place where I can feel closer to my dad, yet it provides enough of a distraction so that feeling of \u2018closeness\u2019 can be separated from the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her absence, Shiffrin lost her lead in the overall standings to Federica Brignone. In her specialist slalom discipline, Petra Vlhova now has a small lead.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin last raced on Jan. 26 when she won a super-G in Bansko, Bulgaria. The next weekend she returned to her family home in Vail to be with her father at the hospital.<\/p>\n

In the video, Shiffrin read one of her father\u2019s favorite poems, thanked the many well-wishers who have sent messages of support, and asked that her family\u2019s privacy continues to be respected.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last few weeks, my family and I have received an overwhelming amount of support and love,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

High expectations<\/h2>\n

The thought that Shiffrin could match or even come close to the success of her record-setting 2018-19 year<\/a> was ludicrous and unattainable. There\u2019s a reason everyone was agog after she set a record with 17 World Cup wins (Switzerland\u2019s Vreni Schneider won 14 in 1988-89) while winning her third consecutive World Cup championship, as well as globes in slalom (her sixth in seven seasons), giant slalom (her first) and super-G (a rather unexpected championship).<\/p>\n

Shiffrin scored 2,204 points on the World Cup. That\u2019s second all-time \u2014 men or women \u2014 only to Slovenia\u2019s Tina Maze\u2019s blockbuster 2012-13 season (2,414). Adding in the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Are, where she won slalom and super-G and took bronze in GS, in February 2019, Shiffrin won 19 of her 29 starts, a wonderfully absurd percentage \u201465.5.<\/p>\n

While stipulating that Shiffrin in a generational athletic treasure, a lot of things had to go right for her to accomplish as much as she did in 2018-19. The super-G globe from that year is a perfect example.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin skied brilliantly in the discipline winning three times and finishing fourth at the World Cup finals. (Victories at worlds do not count toward World Cup points.)<\/p>\n

She also got a break or two along the way. She took off two weeks from speed events in February 2019 and both of those stops were canceled due to weather. The rest of the field lost two chances to gain on an idle Shiffrin in super-G. Shiffrin beat Austria\u2019s Nicole Schmidhofer by 47 points (or just about half a race) for the title.<\/p>\n

Because Shiffrin did not win in 2019-20 at the Herculean pace that she did in 2018-19, uneducated observers were wondering what was \u201cwrong\u201d with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I can say is- this season\/this sport (my career)\/this life is a marathon, not a sprint,\u201d she tweeted, lending the proper perspective, in January.<\/p>\n

Six victories<\/h2>\n

Speaking of perspective, it\u2019s not like Shiffrin fell off the face of the earth by not maintaining her 2018-19 pace. She has won six times on tour this season, edging out rivals Slovakia\u2019s Petra Vlhova and Italy\u2019s Federica Brignone (five each) for most wins on the tour this winter.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin still had days where she absolutely dominated \u2014 she won slaloms in Levi, Finland,<\/a> by 1.79-seconds and in Killington, Vermont, by a whopping 2.29 seconds.<\/a> Shiffrin topped the podium on back-to-back days in Lienz, Austria, in GS and slalom<\/a> during December.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that she also managed to win in all four of the traditional disciplines in one season with downhill and super-G victories in Bansko, Bulgaria, at the end of January.<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time, there was bad luck, bad breaks and frustration. On Jan. 18 in Sestriere, Italy. Shiffrin finished 1-hundredth of a second off the pace in a GS. She finished third<\/a> as Brignone and Vlhova tied for the win.<\/p>\n

The next day, Shiffrin was the victim of a bad course set in parallel slalom, finishing ninth.<\/a> Shiffrin was tactful as always, but when one course set produces 17 winners and the other three in 20 head-to-head matches, something\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

Some days, Shiffrin just wasn\u2019t in the groove, as was the case when she finished 17th in a GS in Courchevel, France,<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, many ski racers would give vital organs for an \u201coff year\u201d like this.<\/p>\n

This story includes reporting from an FIS news release.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mikaela Shiffrin took a month-long break from the World Cup season following the death of her father.Marco Tacca | AP Mikaela Shiffrin\u2019s shot at a fourth World Cup overall title is finished after the International Ski Federation canceled this weekend\u2019s women\u2019s World Cup races in Are, Sweden, due to COVID-19 concerns. The races were canceled after new […]<\/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":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 11:18:32","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":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}