CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Neither Ariane Raedler nor Katharina Huber have ever won a World Cup skiing race.
Yet now they are Olympic champions.
The Austrian duo won gold in the new team combined event at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Tuesday when Mikaela Shiffrin surprisingly wasted a first-run lead by teammate Breezy Johnson.
Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup racer of all time with a record 108 victories — 71 of them in slalom, also a record — has now gone seven straight Olympic races without a medal.
After taking two golds and silver from her first two Olympics, Shiffrin also didn’t win a medal in any of her six races at the Beijing Games four years ago.
Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher of Germany earned silver and Paula Moltzan and Jacqueline Wiles of the U.S. took bronze.
“No tricks here at all,” Shiffrin was told over team radio before her run on a course set by an Austrian coach. “Actually, it’s nothing to report. You got it.”
But Shiffrin lost time to the leaders at every checkpoint and crossed 0.31 seconds behind — missing a medal by finishing 0.06 behind the other American team. In the finish area, Johnson — who was coming off a gold in the individual downhill — embraced Shiffrin, while the Austrians and other podium finishers began celebrating.
The team combined consists of one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with the times from the two added together to determine the results.
Shiffrin still has her individual events of giant slalom and slalom to come.
Raedler placed second in the downhill leg before Huber had the 10th-fastest slalom leg.
“For me, it was sure that Mikaela could do it,” Huber said. “In the end, it was really a surprise gold medal for us.”
Aicher, one of the few all-around skiers competing in every event, also took silver in the individual downhill.
“Usually, Mikaela is the best slalom skier, and we expected her to be super good in this slalom today, too,” Weidle-Winkelmann said. “But this is also slalom. You never know.”
Wiles, who was fourth in the downhill leg, and Moltzan, who had the fourth-fastest slalom leg, both earned their first Olympic medals.
Shiffrin was only 15th fastest in the slalom leg.
