Mikaela Shiffrin parts with coach during world championships

By OlympicTalkFeb 15, 2023, 8:25 AM EST

Mikaela Shiffrin is no longer working with her head coach, Mike Day, she announced during the world Alpine skiing championships.

“After working with Mike Day for seven seasons, I’ve decided to move forward with new leadership on my team for the next phase of my career,” Shiffrin said in a statement through her publicist on Tuesday. “I want to thank Mike and acknowledge all of his work and dedication over the last several years.”

Shiffrin had told Day that she planned to take a new direction with her staff at the end of the season, and Day decided to leave immediately, Shiffrin’s publicist said.

A message was sent to Day seeking comment.

“Mikaela wants to do something different going forward. She wants a new challenge. And she informed Mike and Mike decided to go home,” U.S. Alpine director Patrick Riml said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s a shock for me that he took off.”

Day is no longer working for U.S. Ski and Snowboard in any capacity, an Alpine team press contact said.

“Shiffrin will be moving forward with new coaching, and will continue to be supported closely by the Stifel U.S. Alpine Ski Team coaches for the remainder of the season and in the future,” according to a U.S. Ski and Snowboard statement. “The team thanks Mike Day for his work and great success over the last seven years.”

SkiRacing.com first reported the news.

ALPINE WORLDS: Results | Broadcast Schedule

After serving as men’s technical head coach from 2010-13, Day rejoined U.S. Ski and Snowboard in 2016 as women’s technical head coach, working specifically with Shiffrin.

He was listed as team Shiffrin head coach when this season’s U.S. Alpine staff was announced in October with Mark Mitter also listed as a coach. Shiffrin’s mom, Eileen, was her first coach and still accompanies her on the World Cup.

Shiffrin and Day’s partnership ceased midway through the world championships: two days before she’s scheduled to race the giant slalom and four days before the slalom in Meribel, France.

Last week, Shiffrin appeared en route to a gold medal in the combined until she skied out three gates from the finish of an aggressive slalom run, taking extra risk to chase down Italian Federica Brignone, who was fastest in the super-G run of the event.

Two days later, she earned silver behind Italian Marta Bassino in the super-G, which is Shiffrin’s fourth-best discipline behind slalom, giant slalom and combined (though combined is no longer contested on the World Cup).

At age 27, she earned a 12th career individual world championships medal, tying retired Norwegian Kjetil Andre Aamodt for the most since World War II.

This fall and winter, Shiffrin put up her best World Cup season in four years, winning a circuit-leading 11 times to reach 85 career World Cup victories, one shy of the record held by Swede Ingemar Stenmark, a slalom and giant slalom star of the 1970s and ’80s.

The World Cup season resumes after the world championships next week.

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Football takes significant step in Olympic push

By OlympicTalkMar 29, 2023, 2:18 PM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Football took another step toward possible Olympic inclusion with the IOC executive board proposing that the sport’s international federation — the IFAF — be granted full IOC recognition at a meeting in October.

IOC recognition does not equate to eventual Olympic inclusion, but it is a necessary early marker if a sport is to join the Olympics down the line. The IOC gave the IFAF provisional recognition in 2013.

Specific measures are required for IOC recognition, including having an anti-doping policy compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency and having 50 affiliated national federations from at least three continents. The IFAF has 74 national federations over five continents with almost 4.8 million registered athletes, according to the IOC.

The NFL has helped lead the push for flag football to be added for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Flag football had medal events for men and women at last year’s World Games, a multi-sport competition including Olympic and non-Olympic sports, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Football is one of nine sports that have been reported to be in the running to be proposed by LA 2028 to the IOC to be added for the 2028 Games only. LA 2028 has not announced which, if any sports, it plans to propose.

Under rules instituted before the Tokyo Games, Olympic hosts have successfully proposed to the IOC adding sports solely for their edition of the Games.

For Tokyo, baseball-softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were added. For Paris, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were approved again, and breaking will make its Olympic debut. Those sports were added four years out from the Games.

For 2028, the other sports reportedly in the running for proposal are baseball and softball, breaking, cricket, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, motorsports and squash.

All of the other eight sports reportedly in the running for 2028 proposal already have a federation with full IOC recognition (if one counts the international motorcycle racing federation for motorsports).

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Helen Maroulis stars in wrestling documentary, with help from Chris Pratt

By Nick ZaccardiMar 29, 2023, 10:05 AM EDT

Getty

One of the remarkable recent Olympic comeback stories is the subject of a film that will be shown nationwide in theaters for one day only on Thursday.

“Helen | Believe” is a documentary about Helen Maroulis, the first U.S. Olympic women’s wrestling champion. It is produced by Religion of Sports, the venture founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady. Showing details are here.

After taking gold at the 2016 Rio Games, Maroulis briefly retired in 2019 during a two-year stretch in which she dealt with concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder. The film focuses on that period and her successful bid to return and qualify for the Tokyo Games, where she took bronze.

In a poignant moment in the film, Maroulis described her “rock bottom” — being hospitalized for suicidal ideations.

In an interview, Maroulis said she was first approached about the project in 2018, the same year she had her first life-changing concussion that January. A wrestling partner’s mother was connected to director Dylan Mulick.

Maroulis agreed to the film in part to help spread mental health awareness in sports. Later, she cried while watching the 2020 HBO film, “The Weight of Gold,” on the mental health challenges that other Olympians faced, because it resonated with her so much.

“When you’re going through something, it sometimes gives you an anchor of hope to know that someone’s been through it before, and they’ve overcome it,” she said.

Maroulis’ comeback story hit a crossroads at the Olympic trials in April 2021, where the winner of a best-of-three finals series in each weight class made Team USA.

Maroulis won the opening match against Jenna Burkert, but then lost the second match. Statistically, a wrestler who loses the second match in a best-of-three series usually loses the third. But Maroulis pinned Burkert just 22 seconds into the rubber match to clinch the Olympic spot.

Shen then revealed that she tore an MCL two weeks earlier.

“They told me I would have to be in a brace for six weeks,” she said then. “I said, ‘I don’t have that. I have two and a half.’”

Maroulis said she later asked the director what would have happened if she didn’t make the team for Tokyo. She was told the film still have been done.

“He had mentioned this isn’t about a sports story or sports comeback story,” Maroulis said. “This is about a human story. And we’re using wrestling as the vehicle to tell this story of overcoming and healing and rediscovering oneself.”

Maroulis said she was told that, during filming, the project was pitched to the production company of actor Chris Pratt, who wrestled in high school in Washington. Pratt signed on as a producer.

“Wrestling has made an impact on his life, and so he wants to support these kinds of stories,” said Maroulis, who appeared at last month’s Santa Barbara Film Festival with Pratt.

Pratt said he knew about Maroulis before learning about the film, which he said “needed a little help to get it over the finish line,” according to a public relations company promoting the film.

The film also highlights the rest of the six-woman U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Tokyo. Four of the six won a medal, including Tamyra Mensah-Stock‘s gold.

“I was excited to be part of, not just (Maroulis’) incredible story, but also helping to further advance wrestling and, in particular, female wrestling,” Pratt said, according to responses provided by the PR company from submitted questions. “To me, the most compelling part of Helen’s story is the example of what life looks like after a person wins a gold medal. The inevitable comedown, the trauma around her injuries, the PTSD, the drive to continue that is what makes her who she is.”

Maroulis, who now trains in Arizona, hopes to qualify for this year’s world championships and next year’s Olympics.

“I try to treat every Games as my last,” she said. “Now I’m leaning toward being done [after 2024], but never say never.”

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