Mikaela Shiffrin Finishes Super-G Run, Fails to Medal at 2022 Olympics

The disappointment in Beijing continued for Mikaela Shiffrin, although she took a step forward by finishing her race.

The American star who shockingly missed a gate and skied out in the opening seconds of Sunday's giant slalom and Tuesday's slalom competition also came up short of a medal in Thursday's super-G competition at the 2022 Olympics.

She posted a time of 1:14.30, which was good enough for eighth place of the first 11 skiers to compete.

From an American perspective, there was no doubt that Shiffrin's search for redemption was the biggest storyline of Thursday's race.

While this was her first time competing in the super-G at an Olympics, she figured to be a factor since she won the gold medal in the event in the 2019 world championships and the bronze medal in the 2021 world championships.

Still, she missed what seemed to be her best two chances at medals in the giant slalom and the slalom, considering NBC Olympics noted 61 of her 73 career World Cup victories came in those events. By comparison, only four of those wins came in the super-G.

Shiffrin surely felt even more pressure to bounce back coming into the super-G. After all, Nick Zaccardi of NBC Sports noted the last time she didn't finish back-to-back races at the senior level was in 2011 when she was 16 years old.

The disappointment for the all-time great, who entered the Games with three Olympic medals, 11 world championship medals, three World Cup titles and 73 race victories, was clear, as she despondently sat on the snow on the side of the course for some time after Tuesday's miscue.

Turning that despair into an unforgettable victory in Thursday's event would mean overcoming reigning Olympic champion Ester Ledecka.

The Czech dual-sport athlete, who also competes in the snowboard parallel giant slalom, won the super-G at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and was back to defend her title as the second skier down the hill.

However, Ledecka also found herself out of the medals in the early going, as Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami set the bar at 1:13.51.