Beijing has been a nightmare for U.S. Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin.
The athlete arrived at the 2022 ceremony hoping to win her third consecutive Gold. Instead, she will leave with no individual medals after suffering her third crash, and third DNF (Did-Not-Finish).
Ironically enough, what sealed her loss this time around is what previously helped her win it all--the slalom and giant slalom. With her third fall, Shiffrin claims it's hard to remain calm and optimistic. She, like her fans, is disheartened by the events, sharing,
""I don't really understand it, and I'm not sure when I'm going to have much of an explanation. I can't explain to you how frustrated I am to not know what I can learn from today. The most disappointing thing, beyond walking away from the Games with no individual medals, is that I had multiple opportunities to ski slalom on this track, and I failed in all of them. That's disappointing for me, it's disappointing for my whole team, for the coaches, for everybody who's been working so hard, and it's disappointing for anybody back home [...] I just feel like a joke."
The situation was only made worse when social media trolls took to her inbox, calling her names anywhere from "choker" to "dumb blonde" or even "dumb b**ch". Instead of letting them get to her, Shiffrin posted their comments with a response of her own. It read,
"Well kids...feed 'em what you wanna feed em. Self pity, sadness...let the turkeys get you down. There will always be turkeys. Or get up, Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Get up because you can, because you like what you do when it's not infested with the people who have so much apparent hate for you. Just get up. It's not always easy, but it's also not the end of the world to fail. Fail twice. Fail five times. At the Olympics."
She also stated that this is not the end for her, and that she will not be giving up any time soon, continuing,
"Why do I keep coming back? Gosh knows it hurts more than it feels good lately. I come back because those first nine turns today were spectacular, really heaven. That's where I'm meant to be and I'm stubborn as s**t. So lets go for some team event training tomorrow, and then the final Alpine race of this Olympics on Saturday."
