Austria stunned the field to claim gold in the women’s team combined skiing at the 2026 Winter Olympics, while the U.S. settled for bronze despite Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson starting as overwhelming favorites. Shiffrin, the most dominant slalom skier this season, faltered in the final run, costing the Americans a podium finish by just six hundredths of a second.
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The storybook victory that Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin were poised to deliver at the 2026 Winter Olympics became a cautionary tale about the cruel margins of alpine skiing. Entering Tuesday’s women’s team combined event as the reigning world champions and favorites, the dynamic U.S. duo lost a gold medal by just six hundredths of a second after Shiffrin’s uncharacteristic slalom run failed to close the gap. The agonizing fourth place is now part of Shiffrin’s legacy—alongside the redemption of bronze by teammates Jacqueline Wiles and Paula Moltzan.
Gold went to Austria, where veterans Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber delivered the upset of the Games in the team combined debut, skimming past Germany’s silver medalists, Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher, by five hundredths of a second. The Austrian victory—with Huber anchoring as the final skier—was sealed when Shiffrin, the last woman standing, failed to find her signature slalom rhythm. The 30-year-old, who has won seven of eight World Cup slaloms this season, crossed the finish line in the slowest time of the day, a 1.07-second deficit that dropped her from potential contention altogether.
“We didn’t really expect it,” Huber admitted after the race, quoted by Reuters. “For me, it was true—(I thought) Mikaela will do it. That was really, really a surprise in the end, gold medal for us.”
The dramatic cap to the combined marks a career-defining swing for Shiffrin, who now carries the double-edged mantel of singular excellence and agonizing near-misses. Her resume includes three Olympic medals from Sochi and PyeongChang but is forever haunted by Beijing 2022, where a stomach virus and course mishaps resulted in zero hardware. It is a fate she has sought to rewrite during the Milano-Cortina Games; instead, she must now pivot to the looming technical races—giant slalom and her signature slalom—as her last chances to rewrite this script.
Mikaela Shiffrin: The Weight of Expectation
Since her last podium in PyeongChang in 2018, Shiffrin’s quest for Olympic redemption has been strewn with moments of precision, power, and puzzling defeats. Cortina, the jewel of the Dolomites, was supposed to be different. She arrived as the dominant force in slalom and as the World Cup leader. Her partnership with Johnson, the 2022 world champion who has mastered the Olympus of downhill, made them the pair to beat. It was a role they earned after winning gold together at the 2025 world championships in Switzerland.
On Tuesday, Johnson lived up to her role by posting the fastest downhill run, giving Shiffrin a 0.2-second lead before her slalom leg. The script was set for another show of dominance. But the snow—softer and more forgiving than the icy, hard-packed courses of the regular World Cup season—proved problematic. “I didn’t quite find a comfort level that allows me to produce full speed,” Shiffrin said afterward. “The feeling under the feet was a little off.”
The result was a slalom run nearly 2% slower than her average winning margin this season. Factor in the previous near-misses—Beijing 2022’s wipeout from gold contention in slalom—and the story of Shiffrin’s Cortina campaign now revolves around razor-thin margins. She has two events left to add to her collection of Olympic hardware: giant slalom on Thursday and slalom next Monday. Failing to close this deal in the team combined leaves her needing every ounce of tactical adaptation she can muster before the next technical gate.
Breezy Johnson’s Double-Double Dreams Dashed
Tuesday’s combined loss closed the curtain on Johnson’s bid to complete a “double double”—claiming both the world championship and Olympic gold in both downhill and the team combined. She is already the reigning downhill world champion and leads the World Cup downhill standings; an Olympic downhill gold on February 13 would still complete half the quadruple, yet the team combined’s bronze feels like a near-miss for more.
Johnson, who trains in Utah and grew up racing in Europe, is an athlete who embraces high-pressure moments. That downhill record proved critical in setting up Shiffrin for Tuesday’s leg. Unfortunately, when Shiffrin uncharacteristically missed the pace, Johnson had to accept the cost of relying on the most consistent slalom skier of her generation—and still falling short. It is a chapter that adds a layer of contrast to Johnson’s career: unshakable downhill dominance juxtaposed with the unpredictability of the slalom element.
The Austrians Seize the Day
\**\*Austria’s Ariane Raedler** laid the foundation for gold by finishing second in the downhill leg, giving Huber a 0.2-second buffer before her iconic slalom run. Huber, a bronze medalist in the 2025 world championships and a double-gold winner in Beijing, kept her balance on a steep slalom piste notorious for its hidden compressions. Her final run was clean, measured, and just fast enough to seal gold by 0.05 seconds over Germany.
The spatial awareness that comes with racing at Cortina’s Olimpia delle Tofane—where the gradient leans sharply and shadows obscure icy patches—proved decisive. Huber’s precision and Raedler’s bold lines showed that slalom success here is less about raw speed than about pacing each turn into a perfect arc. Huber’s teammate Mosa Jolanovits, Austria’s former head coach, praised her psychology. “Her headspace was trustworthy. Never rushed. That is when you win,” Jolanovits said, quoted by the International Ski Federation.
A Dutch-Style Grandeur: The Team Combined Début at the Olympics
The Milano-Cortina Games are the first to include the team combined discipline as an Olympic medal sport. Created in 2019 as a way to showcase both technical (slalom) and speed (downhill) skiing within a single gender bracket, the event pairs the best skiers from each nation into two-run relays. This format requires both athletes to complete one downhill and one slalom run, totaling the two fastest composite times for gold.
It is a discipline that rewards consistency across terrain. The racial gyrations between crisp downhill lines and snappy slalom turns force teams to find athletes who can switch mental gears in seconds. Austria, despite only fielding one downhill contender, formed Raedler’s first leg and Huber’s decisive slalom run into a composite strategy that matched timing sharper than the Swiss watchmakers who built Cortina’s cables.
The format’s success could pave the way for a mixed-gender relay as early as 2030, with officials bullish on the idea that relays could bring a more tactical dimension to alpine skiing. Tuesday’s medal podium, featuring Austria, Germany, and the U.S., suggests that tactical rigour and course variables may outweigh sheer speed in future Games.
What It Means for the Future of Olympic Alpine Skiing
The Cortina script folding into gold for Austria backenders, near-misses for the pioneers of technical brilliance, and strategic concreteness underlines that tactical coaching and course-designed timing may emerge as the new margin in Olympic alpine. Cortina’s slalom course, notably softer than most World Cup ski courses, reaffirmed that speed alone will no longer win medals. The successful champions—Raedler’s first-leg downhill and Huber’s closing clear run—built the bridge that connects those consolations to victory.
Shiffrin’s candid acknowledgment about lacking the “feeling under the feet” on softer snow reveals the central challenge for elite skiers in future editions. The sport may pivot toward high-tech materials designed to adapt to changing densities. Tuesday’s race might therefore live on as the inaugural moment when Olympic slalom revealed that existential question: what makes for medal speed when the snow feels tiptoe-flexible?
As the women regroup for Thursday’s giant slalom, which commences at 12:00 PM local time and features Shiffrin hunting one of her two last bulletins of Olympic metal, Tuesday’s race will linger as the most emblematic example of why the Olympics create the most compelling chapters of skiing—not merely because adrenaline is virtuoso, but because medal-craft becomes an existential strategem.
(REUTERS/Lisi Niesner)
For Mikaela Shiffrin, the curtain rises again on Thursday at 12:00 PM local time as she takes to the Cortina slopes for the first leg of the giant slalom. From the moment the first racer kicks off, onlytrustedinfo.com will be there to bring you the fastest, most insightful analysis—breaking down every jagged margin of the course, every tactical turn, and every heartbeat finish between medal or nothing.
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