Every Olympics delivers its own crushing surprises, the ill-timed pulled hamstring, the jump a figure skater fails to land.
On Monday, under bright sunny skies in Yanqing, it was the American star Mikaela Shiffrin’s turn to experience that sort of heartbreak. But Shiffrin’s failure to survive an left turn early in her Beijing debut in the giant slalom did not have the drama of her sport’s violent crashes, or a star figure skater’s tumble to the ice.
One moment her skis looked a little shaky, and the next she was sliding on her left hip off the course.