By John Henderson, for CPR News

The good news for Mikaela Shiffrin is she has two more chances to change the negative Olympics narrative that is slowly engulfing her name. The bad news is her first chance Sunday gives her little chance of changing it.

Shiffrin, the 30-year-old from Edwards who’s the most dominant World Cup skier in history, returns to the Olympic stage for the first time since her flop in Tuesday’s team combined cost her team a medal.

She’ll compete in the giant slalom where she won the Olympic gold in 2018. What the growingly skeptical public may not know is she was always a long shot at medaling Sunday, regardless of how she did in the team combined.

In eight giant slaloms this World Cup season, Shiffrin has only made the podium once. It was her last race: a third on Jan. 24 in Spindleruv Mlyn, Czechia. She’s fourth in the giant slalom standings with 353 points, well behind the 560 of leader Julia Scheib of Austria.

For what it’s worth, Sports Illustrated’s medal predictions do not have Shiffrin medaling in the giant slalom. It picked Scheib for gold, Sweden’s Sara Hector for silver and Switzerland’s Camille Rast for bronze.

The real pressure comes Wednesday in the slalom where she has won seven of eight World Cup races this season and finished second in the other. SI picked her to win gold with Rast second and Lara Colturi to collect Albania’s first Winter Olympics medal in third.

Then again, that was written before Shiffrin’s performance Tuesday.

But first comes the giant slalom where Shiffrin is surprised she’s even considered a dark horse. She suffered a hideous puncture wound to the abdomen in November 2024 and missed nearly the entire 2024-25

season. She didn’t race a single giant slalom. Sunday’s race is part of her comeback.

“In the giant slalom, it has been so cool to experience that building experience, building comfort,” she said during her opening press conference Feb. 7. “The races this season, a lot of them have been really challenging and really dark. Really tough conditions.

“When I compare this season to last season where I was coming back from an injury, I couldn’t imagine getting to a place where I could be contending for a top 10, top five, let alone podiums in giant slalom. It’s pretty spectacular to have my first World Cup podium again, after two years. So it’s been really exciting.”

She knows she’s playing catch up with the other skiers.

“There are turns where I still back off when I see the top women who are consistently winning races, they push harder,” she said. “We talk about stretching that rubber band in the comfort zone. They stretch that rubber band more. I continue to work on it, obviously.”

What may be affecting her more than the puncture to the abdomen are the five Olympic rings. Are they strangling her? In Beijing four years ago, her DNFs (Did Not Finish) in three events and failing to medal in three others are foremost on many casual fans’ minds.

Then came Tuesday when gold medal downhiller Breezy Johnson gave Shiffrin the lead in the team combined. Shiffrin’s slalom time was only 14th best out of 18 skiers. It dropped her team from first to fourth.

She said she didn’t “quite find the comfort level that allows me to produce full speed.” She couldn’t be comfortable with what was on social media. Some trolls tossed around the “choke” word like piles of melting snow.

Actually, her legacy has already been written with two Olympic golds and a silver plus records of 108 World Cup wins and nine Crystal Globes in slalom. But the casual fan thinks skiing is only held once every four years and it has been eight long years since Shiffrin won an Olympic medal.

Even in her Instagram post Wednesday, she hinted that it has taken some toll.

“I was quoted in an interview just about not wanting Beijing to be a reason that I feel fear going into Cortina,” she said. “But at the same time, I think it’s unavoidable, because there are so many eyes on the event.”

The only thing different about the course in Cortina D’Ampezzo are the five Olympic rings. It is a regular stop on the World Cup circuit although it’s mostly used for downhill and Super-G. Shiffrin hadn’t raced slalom here since the 2021 World Championships where she won the individual combined, took second in the giant slalom and third in the slalom.

She should feel comfortable with the familiarity although it didn’t show Tuesday.

“Everything is in the specific Olympic color scheme and it’s beautiful but it changes the way things look,” she said. “Cortina still looks like Cortina. I’ve been various places: three hours away, two hours away, 45 minutes away. You can just drive in instead of taking a five-hour flight to South Korea or Asia which is the equivalent of a trans-Atlantic journey.”

Four years ago in Beijing, she skied out in both her slalom races. Slalom is highly technical and it has more DNFs than downhill and Super-G. But not finishing is one thing. Going slow is another.

Over these next two races, she must be faster than she was Tuesday. At some point, she must find that comfort zone. Somewhere. The slalom is a tough place to find it.

“Those gates come fast, like, Whoa!” she said. “When you’re not in it, it feels like Whac-a-Mole except you’re the mole. You don’t want to be the mole. You want to be whacking.”

The giant slalom’s first run starts at 2 a.m. MST. The second run is at 5:30 a.m. MST. The lowest of the two combined times wins.

John Henderson is a former sportswriter for The Denver Post and now lives in Rome.