MIKAELA SHIFFRIN'S BUTT was getting cold. She'd been sitting on the icy snowpack near the top of the slalom course at Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center for nearly 20 minutes, but she wasn't ready to move. For the second time in three days, Shiffrin had failed to finish a race at the Beijing Olympics, and this time, the three-time Olympic medalist skied out 5 seconds into the first run of her best event.
Shiffrin is so consistently good at the slalom that, two weeks before arriving in Beijing, she got her 47th World Cup slalom win, breaking Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark's 32-year record for the most World Cup wins in a single discipline.