On Wednesday morning Team USA alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin missed a gate seconds into the women’s slalom race, disqualifying her from her second 2022 Winter Olympics event in a row. Shiffrin, who came to Beijing under the pressure of being a two-time Olympic gold medalist and favorite in her events, also crashed out early in her first event (the giant slalom) on Monday, as CNN reports. It was a disappointment for the 26-year-old—but the real shame here isn’t that Shiffrin was disqualified. It’s the high-pressure, insensitive media coverage of a young athlete when they experience a setback while facing personal struggles.
After Shiffrin was disqualified, the camera lingered on her sitting in the snow on the side of the course, looking dejected with her head and arms on her knees while commentators lamented what happened. In an interview that was at times difficult to watch, the reporter pressed Shiffrin about what was going on with her as she fought tears and her voice broke. Viewers of NBC’s post-race analysis heard comments like, “Her nightmare in Beijing continues,” ”It ended before it even started,” “You wait four years and your dream can be over within seconds,” and, “To make a mistake like that is just beyond belief,” as CBS News reports.
Fans of the Olympics already know from the heavy media coverage of Shiffrin’s personal story that she is competing in her first Olympics after her father passed away from a severe head injury in 2020. Plus there are the usual mounds of public pressure and performance anxiety that Olympic athletes face. Losing her father and one of her biggest supporters made Shiffrin think about quitting the sport at one point, and she recently shared that the loss of her father has been weighing heavily on her in the lead-up to Beijing. “It’s still pretty painful to think about,” Shiffrin told the Associated Press in January. Shiffrin, who has previously opened up about battling anxiety and working with a sports psychologist to help with her mental game, said she anticipated tough emotions arising. “I imagine there’s going to be some really, really difficult moments,” Shiffrin told AP. “With this, the hard moments hit whenever they want. It’s not when you choose to be sad or excited.”
Knowing what Shiffrin is dealing with made watching the ordeal unfold on TV feel cruel or exploitative for many viewers—not to mention, upsettingly familiar. This is far from the first time we’ve seen a young female athlete dealing with personal traumas and mental health struggles be treated callously by the media when they stumble. Many Olympics fans drew parallels between the Shiffrin coverage and what unfolded in Tokyo this summer with Simone Biles. (Biles withdrew from the women’s gymnastics team competition after experiencing the dangerous “twisties” owing to stress, anxiety, and repressing the trauma of being sexually abused by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, as SELF has reported.)
“Seeing a LOT of similarities between Simone Biles this summer in Tokyo and now Mikaela Shiffrin in Beijing… perhaps the pressure we put on these female athletes (who are publicly suffering mental pain) is too much,” one dismayed viewer tweeted. “Let’s please not forget the amount of pressure/expectations we put on Simone Biles when discussing Mikaela Shiffrin. Please stop calling her struggles an ‘all time Olympic disappointment’ on national TV after putting those kind of expectations onto her,” wrote another. “Me watching Mikaela Shiffrin after that run: I hope that girl isn't too hard on herself. The Announcers: What a mistake. What a disappointment. This will live in infamy for the rest of time. We have literally not moved the needle on mental health at all,” tweeted a third.
In addition to critiquing the general pressure we put on certain athletes and the critical words of commentators, viewers questioned why NBC continued to air footage of a visibly upset Shiffrin for so long, as well as conduct an extended interview with her in the immediate aftermath of what happened. “Simone Biles didn’t go on a mental health crusade for you to force Mikaela Shiffrin to interview almost immediately after one of her greatest disappointments. Give her space to process. Do better,” one person wrote. “Hey NBC maybe don’t continually air a closeup of Mikaela Shiffrin crying?? Just a thought,” wrote another. And NBC clearly is not alone in this kind of treatment, with other publications and networks delivering similar critiques of athletes.
Much of the media coverage of Shiffrin is dispiriting, to say the least. The shared understanding that Olympic and Paralympic athletes are not performance machines but whole human beings—with complex inner worlds and personal lives, including mental health struggles—has become glaringly obvious to so many. Athletes like Biles, Alexi Pappas, and Naomi Osaka have helped us make tremendous strides in recent years. Shiffrin herself made a move reminiscent of Osaka on Thursday, announcing via a team spokesperson that she and her mother (and coach) Eileen would not be participating in any media interviews “for the foreseeable future,” Reuters reports. “Thank you for respecting her/their space right now,” the spokesperson said in a text. But the truth is that this collective concern for the mental health of elite athletes is still relatively new. We are rewriting some deeply entrenched cultural beliefs when it comes to sports coverage—about what we think athletes “owe” us, how they should be treated, and the appropriate tone for covering their setbacks.
NBC’s assertive defense of its coverage demonstrated just how deeply ingrained the old norms are in these institutions. Molly Solomon, executive producer of NBC’s Olympics coverage, told the Associated Press on Wednesday night that the network has an “obligation” to cover such a moment and that there is “no script” for how to do so. “We’re watching real people with real emotions in real time and we did everything we were supposed to do.” Many viewers seem to be arguing, though, that the real “obligation” media outlets have is to pen a new script that departs from what a network is “supposed to do” based on tradition.
Solomon also argued that the blowback showed a “double standard in coverage of women’s sports.” She told the AP, “Women’s sports should be analyzed through the same lens as the men. The most famous skier in the world did not finish her two best events. So we are going to show her sitting on the hill and analyze what went wrong. You bet we are.” Setting aside the fact that the coverage went far beyond mere analysis, that defense only illuminates just how broad of a transformation we need here. The issue is not whether female athletes deserve special treatment. The issue is the very lens Solomon is talking about—the one through which we cover all athletes. It makes you wonder: Would we be OK seeing a male athlete who is struggling with the loss of a parent and their mental health treated the same way after a shocking disqualification? And if so, then we need to seriously reevaluate how we treat our male athletes too.
So yes, it is completely infuriating to see another individual brutalized by this kind of intense pressure and callous coverage when they’re down. And it underscores how much work we have left to do. But the backlash against how Shiffrin’s story was covered also proves that the needle is moving when it comes to the treatment of our athletes that we will accept. Progress may be halting, and the change may not be as fast or linear as athletes deserve. Yet it is undeniable that the growing numbers of viewers who are speaking up, rejecting the old narrative, and asking the media to do better indicates that the norms are indeed shifting.
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