Shiffrin’s agony of defeat…

...shows much more than one athlete not having it together for a series of days at a hugely important event. 

It underscores the fact that the United States is a one-gifted-skier-at-a-time organization (Miller, Vonn, Ligety, Shiffrin) not a deep team, as Austria, Italy, Norway and Switzerland are.

Until this changes and something happens in the organization to be more inclusive and collective, let’s brace for more of these sad events. 

What happened to Mikaela Shiffrin at the US ski team parallels what Alexis Painturault, from the French ski team, experienced at these Olympics, and the result of their special treatment compared to the rest of the athletes, not to mention the excessive media pressures put onto them. 

Yet, an athlete’s bad streak isn’t always avoidable and just like in the stock market, diversification, in the form of a deep and cohesive stable of athletes, always pays off. 

This is something Sophie Goldschmidt president and CEO of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard will have to analyze and address when she returns from China...