Mikaela Shiffrin exited her final event of the 2022 Winter Olympics with her head held up high.
Shiffrin had her best finish of the Beijing Games on Saturday night, but it still wasn't enough to end her medal drought. Shiffrin, Tommy Ford, Paula Moltzan and River Radamus lost to reigning bronze medalist Norway in the bronze medal showdown of the mixed team parallel event.
The United States and Norway each won two head-to-head matchups, but Norway won the tiebreaker (combination of the best female and male times) by 0.42 seconds.
While the loss meant Shiffrin wouldn't be bringing home any hardware from Beijing, she was still extremely proud of her team's performance.
"I don't think you can emphasize it enough how unbelievable it is for us to be here and be in the hunt for a medal," Shiffrin said in an interview alongside her teammates. "I get that people will say we came up short. But the thing is, to have this depth on our team coming from the U.S., competing in a European-dominated sport, coming here and having all of us skiing so strongly...
"River, the fact that you were skiing so strongly that you even gave us hope, that's the biggest win you could ever give us."
Shiffrin went 1-3 in her head-to-head mixed team races, although two of her losses were by 0.10 seconds or less.
The 26-year-old entered the event on the heels of a shockingly disappointing showing in the individual alpine competitions. Shiffrin skied out of the first two events -- the slalom and giant slalom -- before placing ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill. The three-time Olympic medalist then skied out again in the slalom portion of the combined event.
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After a rough couple of weeks, Shiffrin was thankful to compete alongside Ford, Moltzan and Radamus in the mixed team, calling it her "favorite memory" of the Games.
"It's just been incredible to compete today with you guys," Shiffrin told her teammates. "After a long Olympics, this is my absolute favorite memory and I just want to thank you for that."
