Mikaela Shiffrin's twin DNFs at Beijing Winter Olympics shine a spotlight on pressure facing elite athletes

Mikaela Shiffrin sat on the snow beside the slalom course, skis in front of her, poles to the side, her head buried in her arms.

The two-time Olympic champion, the most successful slalom skier of all time, was out of her pet event in Beijing.

For the second time in as many races at this Olympic Games, she failed to negotiate the fifth gate of the course and registered a DNF – did not finish.

This is uncharted territory.

«I've never been in this position before and I don't know how to handle it,» Shiffrin told the Olympic News Service.

«Honestly, I am at a loss. It's hard to really know what went wrong aside from I slipped up a bit on one turn and didn't have enough space to recover from it.»

Shiffrin failing to finish a race is rare. In slalom racing, it's virtually unheard of.

When she failed to finish the second run at the World Cup event at Kranjska Gora in January, that was her first DNF in the event since January 2018.

In fact, the 26-year-old American has only failed to finish a slalom race three times in the last eight years – an extraordinary record in a sport where just one mistake can be terminal for your chances.

No wonder she sat there on the side of the course for close to half an hour, contemplating what had gone wrong.

Shiffrin is inarguably one of the most gifted alpine skiers of all time, with the third most World Cup victories (73) ever, as well as five world championship titles and three Olympic medals.

As a result, she was the American pin-up of this Games.

But with that growing profile came the pressure and expectation that stardom entails.

It's not something she's ever enjoyed.

In an October interview with the Washington Post, Shiffrin described the Olympics as being «terrifying for the entire two weeks straight»