02/10/26 10:21:00
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02/10 10:19 CST Raedler and Huber of Austria win team combined at the Olympics,
Mikaela Shiffrin is 4th
Raedler and Huber of Austria win team combined at the Olympics, Mikaela
Shiffrin is 4th
By ANDREW DAMPF
AP Sports Writer
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) --- 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
Games on Tuesday when Mikaela Shiffrin surprisingly crossed fourth after
wasting 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 a 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.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
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