Biles and Vonn rally around Shiffrin after latest Winter Olympics DQ

Simone Biles and Lindsey Vonn were among the US sports stars to throw their support behind Mikaela Shiffrin amid the American alpine skiing star’s nightmarish start to the Winter Games.

Shiffrin, one of the most decorated skiers in history whose bid for as many as five medals in China has been a tentpole of US rightsholder NBC’s breathless promotion of the Olympics, has failed to complete either of her two races so far thanks to a pair of highly uncharacteristic errors.

The 26-year-old overall World Cup leader skied out after missing a gate early in her first run of Monday’s giant slalom, ending her Olympic title defence only 10 seconds into her Beijing debut. Then on Wednesday, Shiffrin nearly fell at the fourth gate and was disqualified before the sixth in the women’s slalom, her signature event.

As the dejected two-time Olympic champion sat in the snow on the side of the hill with her head bowed in disbelief for more than 10 minutes. NBC drew criticism on social media for lingering on the shot while other skiers continued their first runs. While the network’s cameras were fixed on Shiffrin, the four-times Olympic champion gymnast Simone Biles tweeted a show of support.

Shortly after, Biles retweeted a post by the LGBTQ+ activist Charlotte Clymer, who wrote: “I don’t know, shaming people just because they didn’t perform well at the Olympics feels like the opposite of why we supposedly have the Olympics in the first place.”

Vonn, the famed American skier whose three Olympic medals include a downhill gold in 2010, wrote that she was “gutted” for her longtime US teammate. “But this does not take away from her storied career and what she can and will accomplish going forward,” Vonn tweeted. “Keep your head high.”

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