The Olympic women’s slalom featuring EagleVail’s Mikaela Shiffrin that was scheduled for Tuesday night (Denver time) has been postponed until Thursday night Denver time because of high winds at the alpine venue. It was the second time a women’s race was postponed this week. The giant slalom that was scheduled for Sunday night was moved to Wednesday night, which will be Shiffrin’s first race.
“It is definitely unfortunate that we weren’t able to race today, but it is important we have a fair race for all of the athletes and today’s conditions would definitely not have been fair,” Shiffrin said. “Weather delays and postponements are just the nature of an outdoor sport, but we’ll continue to take it day by day and I look forward to getting in the start gate!”
The women have yet to race in PyeongChang. The men have raced only once, the alpine combined that was held despite high winds on Monday night.
“Everyone is a little bummed out when a day like this happens, but they do happen, so we’re quite used to it. When you have gusty winds like that, it is difficult to have a fair race, and the weather forecast called for winds to increase throughout the afternoon, right around our proposed start time for both runs, so that was a red flag for officials as well. We’ve been through days like this before, in World Cup, quite often and the number one thing is safety and the second thing is to have a good, fair race. So, neither of those were achievable today,” said women’s coach Paul Kristofic. “Now we’re going to get ready for giant slalom, so there’s going to be giant slalom training this afternoon. We roll with the punches and make the best of the situation and try to prepare the best we can for the next day.”
