Sawt Falasteen - Shiffrin flops at Winter Olympics as helmet row simmers

America's top team were firm favourites to win the women's team combined event in Cortina d'Ampezzo after individual downhill champion Breezy Johnson topped the times in the morning's downhill run.

But Shiffrin stuttered through the slalom -- her specialist event -- and the US pair finished in a disappointing fourth place, with Austrians Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber claiming gold.

Defeat will sting for 30-year-old Shiffrin, who is the most successful World Cup skier of all time and came into the Games in red-hot form.

The two-time Olympic gold medallist had a point to prove after a disastrous showing at the 2022 Beijing Games, where she failed to win a single medal.

But Shiffrin was a full second slower than Emma Aicher, whose session-leading time of 44.38sec gave Germany silver while another US pairing, Jacqueline Wiles and Paula Moltzan, took bronze.

The American said she would learn from her disappointing run, which cranks up the pressure ahead of next week's slalom, the final alpine skiing event of the Games.

"I didn't quite find a comfort level that like allows me to produce full speed, so I'm going to have to learn what to do, what to adjust in the short time we have before the other tech races," she said.

Shiffrin's performance denied Johnson a second gold of the Games after she triumphed in the downhill on Sunday, when Lindsey Vonn suffered a broken leg in a brutal crash.

Vonn, 41, who had been expected to share star billing with Shiffrin at the Milan-Cortina Games, revealed on Monday she had suffered a "complex tibia fracture" when she crashed in the downhill and would need "multiple surgeries to fix properly".

But in a social media post the 2010 Olympic champion said she had no regrets about competing, insisting that the ruptured anterior cruciate ligament she sustained before the Games "had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever".

- Helmet row -

Away from the slopes, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it had banned Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych from wearing a helmet that features pictures of sportspeople killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but has allowed him to wear a black armband instead.

Gestures of a political nature during competition are forbidden under the Olympic charter, though athletes are permitted to express their views in press conferences and on social media.

IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said the helmet contravened guidelines but that it would "make an exception to the guidelines to allow him to wear a black armband during competition to make that commemoration".

Heraskevych, who was one of Ukraine's two flag bearers in the opening ceremony in Italy, said the decision to ban the helmet which he has worn in training for his event, "simply breaks my heart".

He told AFP's German partner SID that he saw nothing wrong with the headwear and intended to continue wearing it, despite the IOC ban.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had defended Heraskevych's right to wear the helmet, thanking him "for reminding the world of the price of our struggle".

"This truth cannot be inconvenient, inappropriate or called a 'political demonstration at a sporting event'. It is a reminder to the entire world of what modern Russia is," the president said.

Ukrainian Sports Minister Matviy Bidnyi told AFP this month that Russia has killed "more than 650 athletes and coaches" since it invaded Ukraine, according to the latest data.

Earlier Tuesday, Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Klaebo added a seventh Olympic gold to his career haul, with victory in the men's sprint classic. He won the skiathlon earlier in the Games.

Klaebo's compatriot Birk Ruud won gold in the men's freeski slopestyle, keeping his cool in an error-filled event at Livigno Snow Park. Norway top the medals table with six golds.

And red-faced Games organisers said athletes whose medals had broken could hand them in for repair after a string of embarrassing glitches.

J.Saleh--SF-PST