Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic nightmare goes on after third failure to finish

Mikaela Shiffrin's nightmarish Olympics spilled into Thursday when she was unable to complete the slalom leg of the women's combined, the latest disappointment in a Beijing Games alpine skiing's biggest winner would sooner forget.

The 26-year-old American appeared on course for a redemptive medal on the last day of individual competition in Yanqing after clocking the fifth-best time in the morning's downhill portion, 0.56sec behind the halfway leader, Christine Scheyer of Austria, and ahead of a gaggle of contenders that included Italy's Federica Brignone (by 0.13sec) and the Swiss pair of Wendy Holdener (0.43) and Michelle Gisin (0.44).

But Shiffrin, who has won more World Cup slalom races - 47 - than any male or female skier, was left fighting back tears on the side of the course after crashing out 10 gates into the afternoon slalom, ensuring she will depart Beijing with no individual medals after managing to complete two of her five races.

"My plan, well, it was quite simple," she said. "Just make the turns, try to be clean, fresh on the outside skis. Specifically, I wanted to be calm from the start and get into my tempo and just build it from there. I just wanted to get a full run of slalom.

"I don't know if there's anybody who ever had so many opportunities to get a medal in the Olympic Games and failed so many times."

Gisin won the gold, following the 12th-fastest downhill with the fastest slalom for a combined time of 2min 25.67sec to retain her Olympic title. Holdener finished 1.05sec behind to claim the silver while Brignone took bronze, coming in 1.85sec off the pace.

Shiffrin's disqualifications for missing gates early in her opening runs of last Monday's giant slalom and Wednesday's slalom were unexpected enough. After all, the Colorado native had failed to finish a race twice in four years entering the Games and 13 times in 228 starts across all disciplines at World Cup, Olympic and world championship events.