KILLINGTON — Sportswriters began envisioning a storybook finish a week ago when the most victorious Alpine skier in history scored her 99th victory on the international racing circuit.
“The prospect of Mikaela Shiffrin winning her 100th World Cup has been a steady drumbeat,” Ski magazine wrote in one of a blizzard of resulting articles. “It is a milestone once unthinkable.”
The only thing more surprising: What some 20,000 spectators and a national television audience many times larger witnessed instead at the circuit’s Thanksgiving weekend stop at the Killington Ski Resort.
Shiffrin, a 2013 graduate of the Northeast Kingdom’s Burke Mountain Academy, arrived as the perennial winner of the Vermont event’s closing-day slalom for all but one of its past seven years (she placed fifth in 2022). But scribes and spectators also knew her as a regular runner-up in the opening-day giant slalom, which she half-jokingly has declared a “nuisance.”
“Over years and years, I’ve consistently come short,” the two-time Olympic gold medalist told reporters at a Friday press conference.
Then Shiffrin threw everyone Saturday by finishing her first giant slalom run with a split-second lead over reigning champion Sara Hector of Sweden.
“Mikaela Shiffrin takes lead,” the Associated Press reported in a headline that quickly spun around the globe, “in chase for 100th career World Cup win.”
Two hours later, NBC Sports opened its live broadcast of the Saturday finals with news of almost two feet of snow that fell Thursday, followed by a fire-hosing of water for a hard freeze Friday.
“They have what they would call perfect — it is boilerplate ice,” broadcaster Steve Porino told some 2 million viewers. “As for the rest of the world, you can’t stand on this surface without taking a tumble.”
Skiing last in the afternoon round, Shiffrin was 1 minute 41 seconds down the racecourse when, some 12 seconds from the finish line, she slipped, somersaulted and skidded into two gates before slamming into a plastic fence.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” NBC’s three-person broadcast team screamed in unison.
The cheering crowd turned silent.
“Worst case scenario,” one announcer said.
As Shiffrin lay still on the hill, social media stirred into a frenzy. U.S. Olympic colleague Lindsey Vonn soon wrote: “Hope @MikaelaShiffrin is ok” with two praying hands emojis.
In response, the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team posted: “Mikaela took the sled down and is currently being evaluated. More info to come, but take solace in the fact that she asked about her splits,” referring to her race time before the fall.
Shiffrin herself addressed the situation by nightfall in a video she filmed during a medical examination at Rutland Regional Medical Center.
“Not really too much cause for concern at this point,” the 29-year-old said as she pointed to “a pretty good abrasion.” “I am so sorry to scare everybody, and it looks like all scans so far are clear, so thank you for the support and concern.”
Appearing Sunday on NBC, Shiffrin confirmed a team statement reporting her ligaments, bones and internal organs “look OK,” with her injuries limited to an abdominal puncture wound and muscle bruising.
“Very lucky to not have worse,” she said.
Shiffrin used social media to congratulate fellow Vermont-schooled U.S. teammates Paula Moltzan and Nina O’Brien, noting she’d be “cheering from the sidelines” as she recovered.
End of a dream? Smiling for the cellphone camera, the oft-deemed “Queen of Killington” put it all in perspective: Just the end of a day.
Shiffrin’s two U.S. teammates, both achieving career bests over the weekend, understood the ups and downs of their sport.
Moltzan, a former University of Vermont student, nearly crashed at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, only to keep her balance on one ski and land in the top 15. This past weekend, the 30-year-old finished the giant slalom in fifth, only to hurt her arm during a spill in Sunday’s slalom.
“This race is probably my favorite on tour for a handful of reasons,” Moltzan told reporters. “A, it’s in Vermont. B, my family could be here. And C, the crowd is unreal. I may not be a Vermonter by birth, but I am a Vermonter by choice.”
O’Brien, for her part, broke her leg at the 2022 Olympics and again at a 2023 training camp. But the 2015 Burke Mountain Academy graduate came back to place sixth on Saturday and 40th on Sunday.
“We’re super excited to have this race in Killington,” O’Brien, 27, told reporters. “I think you need to see it to feel it.”
Shiffrin’s spill was just one of several challenges for Killington, which tapped the World Cup to showcase its new local, independent ownership and plans for a 450-acre retail and residential village.
The temperature at the biggest ski area in eastern North America was a wilting 76 degrees on Halloween and an equally melting 56 degrees on Veterans Day before finally dipping some two weeks ago, allowing the resort to fire up its new $7 million artillery of low-energy snowmaking guns.
“It was a real battle with Mother Nature this year,” Killington President Mike Solimano told the media.
The Killington resort nonetheless won accolades for harnessing not only snowmaking but also some 400 volunteers who helped handle the influx of World Cup spectators that grew the slopeside town’s population of 1,407 by nearly 14 times over the weekend.
Shiffrin’s quest for history will continue — although later than anticipated. A coming World Cup competition in Quebec has been canceled due to a lack of snow, according to organizers. The next stop after is Beaver Creek in Colorado — near Shiffrin’s hometown of Vail — although “it’s pretty likely that I will not be able to race (there), unfortunately,” she said on NBC.
“No. 100,” USA Today wrote in the latest flurry of stories, “will have to wait.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Mikaela Shiffrin wanted a 100th World Cup win. Instead, she shook Killington with a surprising rise and fall..