Mikaela Shiffrin crashes out in slalom during Olympic combined: No individual medal at Beijing 2022

Mikaela Shiffrin will leave the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics without an individual medal after failing to finish the slalom run of the women's Alpine combined event on Thursday (17 February).

The American alpine skiing star, who is the most successful slalom skier in World Cup history, crashed out just after a few gates in the top part of the 'Ice River' track in Yanqing on a course set by her coach Mike Day.

That was the third race that Shiffrin has been unable to complete during these Winter Games after early exits in both the slalom and giant slalom. She finished ninth in the Super G last Friday and 18th in the downhill on Tuesday.

"I don't really understand what's not working on these races and especially today," said Shiffrin on Europort-Discovery.

She continued "Even in the GS and the slalom race, I felt maybe I had a too high intensity, like I was trying too hard and I just didn't get into my rhythm first. But today I was like, 'I'm much more relaxed'. Just, 'Hey, it's slalom. I know how to do slalom. I will take the chance to get into my tempo and then I'll start pushing each gate, just building from there.'

"And I didn't want to hold back on the run just to make it to the finish. And I wasn't. But I also wasn't going 110 percent. I was just skiing and it still didn't work. So I don't have a really good explanation for it. And that's like, you can imagine how annoying that is for me because I always, always want to find an explanation. And right now, it's just, yeah, there isn't one."

Shiffrin explained that pressure wasn't the problem: "There are some races where I feel insane pressure," she said.

"I've talked about it before. My whole career... I mean, the last Olympic year, you know, in South Korea, I was