“Weather Can Affect the Outcome”: Mikaela Shiffrin’s Coach Reflects on the Unexpected Issues that Can Take Away Her Gold Medal Dream at Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

On February 15th, Mikaela Shiffrin will take part in the downhill ski for the first time at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Notably, this decision was taken after Shiffrin had two successful training runs, proving that she could go ahead with the event.

However, the event was postponed for 30 mins in the morning due to bad weather. Opening up on the same, Mikaela’s coach, Mike Day, expressed his concerns about her performance.

Will bad weather have a negative effect on Shiffrin’s performance?

The start of the Winter Olympics wasn’t so good for Mikaela Shiffrin. She crashed out from her dominant slalom event and was further disqualified from her giant slalom event.

However, she was quick to pull herself up and took part in the Super G, where she finished in the 9th position. Following this, she trained in 2 sessions for the downhill, where she did quite well. That is when her coach and team decided that Mikaela could participate in the downhill.

However, as the downhill event was postponed by 30 minutes on Tuesday, her coach was worried about the effect it have on Mikaela’s performance.

“On a micro level, you know, the weather can affect the outcome of a race that’s happening. We saw that in the Olympics Super G in Korea,” said Mike Day, stating the example of Pyeongchang 2018.

Mikaela Shiffrin’s gold medal hopes are now in question

Given the nature of the sport, poor weather can have a drastic impact on the players involved. Mike further talked about the grievance of the situation.

“When people are coming down in big numbers and ultimately the wind has changed or the track is glazed or you know something has occurred to encourage faster times, then clearly it can happen right there on a more macro level,” revealed the coach.

Not always such weather conditions can be predicted accurately. Prior to the delay in the start of the events, athletes weren’t expecting hindrance of any kind. However, with a roadblock ahead, how well do you think Mikaela will do on her debut?

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