The Alpine combined event is Vonn and Shiffrin’s only race together at the Olympics.
This will be a race to remember.
For the first, and likely only, time at an Olympics, Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin will compete head-to-head in Friday’s Alpine combined. It is a figurative passing of the torch, with Vonn in her last Olympics and Shiffrin poised to become the face of the U. S. ski team.
But it is so much more than that.
It’s rare we get the chance to see true greatness. I’m not talking about the best-at-the-time version that pales and becomes one dimensional when viewed through history. I mean the transcendent kind that grows in stature and becomes even more awe-inspiring as the years pass.
It’s what we saw in Jesse Owens and Althea Gibson, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt.
And it’s what we have in Vonn and Shiffrin.
Vonn is the greatest female ski racer in history, and needs six more World Cup victories to break Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 86 and eliminate the need for a modifier. She won her third Olympic medal Wednesday, a bronze in the women’s downhill that makes the 33-year-old the oldest woman to win an Alpine medal.
Still a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, Shiffrin already has 41 World Cup victories and earlier in the Games picked up her second Olympic gold medal. This one came in the giant slalom. Four years ago, she won gold in the slalom.
“It’s a thrill and I also watch with the knowledge that it’s a fleeting moment,” said Tiger Shaw, president and CEO of the U. S. Ski and Snowboard Association.
“And know not to expect anything but to hope for a lot.”
While the best athletes have always had someone to push them, it’s rare that person has been their equal. Magic and Bird come to mind, as do Venus and Serena or Federer and Nadal.
But the Vonn-Shiffrin “rivalry” is different because it’s been more of a virtual one, running on parallel tracks rather than a collision course.
Shiffrin’s focus has been on slalom, where she became the youngest Olympic champion in the event four year ago. Of her World Cup victories, 39 have been in slalom events. She’s won four season slalom titles, and finished second last year in giant slalom.
Vonn is the speed queen. She won the Olympic downhill in Vancouver, along with a bronze in Super-G. Of her 81 career wins, 42 are in the downhill and another 28 are in Super-G.
Vonn also has eight season titles in downhill, including six in a row from 2008-13, and five in Super-G.
Though Vonn raced slalom earlier in her career, she’s done it sparingly since blowing out her knee at the 2013 world championships, an injury that cost her most of the 2014 season. Thus, the intersections between her career and Shiffrin’s have been limited.
“I wouldn’t say they ignore each other,” Shaw said. “Ski racing is an individual sport. You’ve got to beat everybody so you don’t get fixated on any one person.”
But Shiffrin has gradually begun adding speed events to her schedule, and won her first downhill race earlier this season. At a race in Cortina, Italy, last month, she was third while Vonn was second.
Shiffrin had originally hoped to race all five events in Pyeongchang, which would have meant she and Vonn would have competed against each other three times. But blustery winds wreaked havoc on the schedule, delaying the giant slalom and the slalom and causing the combined to be moved up a day.
As a result, Shiffrin dropped out of both the Super-G and the downhill, leaving the combined as the lone race in which she’ll see Vonn.
Shiffrin will be favored to medal, if not win. The downhill run is short – “We should make the downhill longer for sure,” Vonn cracked Wednesday – and Shiffrin is so exceptional at slalom that she should be able to make up any deficit easily.
Vonn will face a tougher task, though she was fourth in the combined at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, last month.
Regardless of the result, just seeing the two of them together makes the race a special event. That it is two female athletes commanding the center stage makes it all the more so. At a time when our country is wrestling with how poorly we’ve valued women and looking for ways to atone for decades of diminishment and disrespect, the best and baddest athletes on the world’s biggest stage will be two American women.
“I remain in awe of the women that dominate in our sports,” Shaw said. “They’re incredible role models, and we badly need that in today’s environment with everything that’s happening in the world. It’s wonderful that we get to be the centerpiece and showcase of extraordinary women.
“I’m thrilled to be a part of that.”
So should we all.
