(Zhangjiakou) When Laurence St-Germain walked into the gate, Mikaela Shiffrin was still sitting in the snow, on the edge of a security fence.
Posted at 5:43 a.m.
Updated at 6:21 a.m.
Stunned psychologically, her head in both hands, the queen of alpine skiing was trying to understand what had just happened. For her second consecutive start at the Beijing Olympics, the 26-year-old American was off the track again after five gates in the first run, this time in her specialty, slalom, on a course laid out by her coach.
How could this happen again to the most consistent skier in history, winning 47 World Cup slaloms, an absolute record in the same discipline?
“It makes me question the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about skiing, slalom and the racing mentality,” she later told NBC.
PHOTO ROBERT F. BUKATY, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mikaela Shiffrin went off the track again after five gates in the first run, this time in her specialty, slalom.
The 2014 Sochi gold medalist felt like she had “let everyone down”.
“My entire career has taught me to trust my skiing when it’s good skiing. It’s the only thing I can rely on on race days. And when the pressure is high – of course the pressure is high – but I didn’t feel that was the biggest problem today. »
In her bubble at the top of the Yanqing track, St-Germain did not know the drama that had just taken place for Shiffrin, who preceded her by two bib numbers.
The athlete from Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges had only his race plan in mind: attack, attack, attack, the only way in his eyes to achieve his goal, which is to get on the podium at his second Olympics.
“Send down! yelled Alex, the physiotherapist and the team’s biggest cheerleader.
St-Germain had the right attitude, but a clear mistake three-quarters of the way through – she ended up on the inside ski – nearly knocked her off the course. By the time she put the skis back in the right direction, she had lost a big second.
The addition was salty at the finish: 2.34 seconds behind the leader, the German Lena Duerr, which ultimately relegated her to 22and rung. In other words, his podium chances had evaporated. She slapped her thighs and head in the finish area.
Despite everything, St-Germain did not want to flagellate himself a little later in a videoconference with the Quebec journalists present in Beijing.
“Yes I wanted a medal, but I knew that to get there, I had to attack at 110%. That’s really what I did. I’m really happy with it. »
She kept the same attitude in the second run. Without being perfect, this descent allowed her to settle temporarily in the lead, until the Norwegian Thea Louise Stjernesund dislodged her.
Joyful, the Quebecer was able to greet her cousins Antoine and Martin, her aunt Marie and her parents. “My little cousin Antoine did his first ski race just before the Games,” she said in an interview.
Author of 10and time of the second run, St-Germain finally concluded the race at the 17and place, losing 2.59 seconds to gold medalist, Slovak Petra Vhlova. She had completed 15and four years ago in South Korea.
“On paper, I’m not really proud of the result. In PyeongChang, I was happy to be 15and. There, I did less well when I was aiming much higher. But my goal to get the medal I wanted was to give 110%, arrive confident and attack from the first gate. That’s what I did. I really have no regrets. »
If the track, the aptly named Ice River, turned out to be less steep than she had feared, the artificial snow in Yanqing was complex to tame. Balance in sharpening was hard to find on this sometimes grippy, sometimes rock-hard surface.
St-Germain does not remember having skied on snow of this type. “In PyeongChang, it was somewhat similar snow, but less compact, less reactive. It took me a little less time to get used to the snow in Korea. Here, we arrived still tight [dans le temps] with the race. I only had three days of pattern training. Maybe we could have arrived a little earlier to give ourselves a chance to get used to it. I don’t know if it would have really made a difference to my result. »
The Canadian team, which had had some good flashes recently in the World Cup, did not have success between the stakes in China. At her fourth Olympics, Toronto’s Erin Mielzynski finished 16and, just ahead of St-Germain. Rookies Ali Nullmeyer (21and) and Amelia Smart (27and) ended a little further.
Great rival of Shiffrin, Vhlova finally won a first Olympic medal after a disappointment in giant (14and). Eighth in the initial heat, the 26-year-old Slovak set the fastest time on the second try.
His win was confirmed when Duerr tumbled to fourth. Austria’s Katharina Liensberger and Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener, particularly emotional as she consoled the German, won silver and bronze respectively.
After attending a luge competition in the evening and perhaps his friend Éliot Grondin’s snowboard cross event, St-Germain has to leave Beijing with regret on Thursday.
The student in biomedical engineering at the Polytechnique does not bring back a medal in her luggage, but confidence in view of the last two slaloms of the World Cup next month.
“There was not a race where I attacked like today, except perhaps my second run at Schladming (second time behind Shiffrin on January 11, editor’s note). I’m really happy to have had that attitude in both races, even if I made mistakes. I still learned a lot today. »
After the men’s combined on Thursday, Marie-Michèle Gagnon must come into action in the super-G on Friday. Will Shiffrin have been able to overcome her disappointment?