Tired Shiffrin takes break from World Cup stage to recharge

The only sure way to beat Mikaela Shiffrin these days is to have her not show up.

And that's about to be the case.

A worn out and under-the-weather Shiffrin will temporarily apply the brakes on her splendid season in order to take a much-needed breather. The way she's racing, that's almost got to be a sigh of relief for the rest of the field.

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin competes during an alpine ski World Cup women's parallel slalom city event, in Hammarbybacken, Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. (Christine OlssonTT via AP)

The skier from Avon, Colorado , plans on skipping World Cup races in Switzerland and Russia — site of the 2014 Sochi Games, where she won Olympic gold in the slalom — before returning to the circuit for the final push. Following a nearly two-week hiatus, she will be back in the start gate for the technical races in the Czech Republic and then the World Cup Finals in Andorra.

Her absence is a chance for other names to appear on top of a podium she's dominated of late.

So far this season, Shiffrin's recorded 20 top-three finishes, including 14 World Cup wins along with two world championships gold medals and a bronze. She's already wrapped up the World Cup slalom title and currently sits 719 points ahead of Petra Vlhova of Slovakia in a bid to win her third straight overall World Cup crown.

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin competes during an alpine ski World Cup women's parallel slalom city event, in Hammarbybacken, Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. (Christine OlssonTT via AP)

Shiffrin could keep right on charging. But what she really needs is time to recharge.

"Just get 100 percent recovered and healthy again, get some training in," said Shiffrin, who turns 24 on March 13.

Shiffrin's been running on fumes for days. She earned her fourth straight slalom title at the world championships in Sweden last Saturday despite a cold so severe it had her team fearing she might have a touch of pneumonia. She wasn't sure how well she could compete, but stormed to the title with a furious final run that left her breathless and speechless.

"Most emotional I've ever been at a ski race. I kept crying," said Shiffrin , who's typically so reserved after wins. "Some of that might have been illness and being exhausted."

A few days later, Shiffrin captured a city event in Stockholm. It was her 57th career win on the circuit and 14th of the season, matching the record for most World Cup victories in a single campaign, set by Swiss great Vreni Schneider in the 1990s.

Then, Shiffrin fell into a deep slumber that lasted 13 hours. She was that exhausted.

"Rest," she said, "is going to help a lot."

And rest assured, she's got the formula for winning down to a science. Her hidden secret? Don't set high expectations.

Better yet, none at all.

She does her best work when she doesn't imagine a good run, because rarely does it live up to the picture in her mind. So she concentrates on going from gate to gate in order to capture win after win.

"When I'm in the starting gate thinking, 'I want to win this,' I bring the intensity too high and then I make a mistake," explained Shiffrin, who also won gold in the super-G at the recent world championships and bronze in the giant slalom. "I get to the finish and I'm really disappointed because I totally let the result get in the way of the actual process. My biggest goal is every time I stand in the starting gate, no matter what records I might be looking at, focus on the skiing, focus on the turns, because that's the thing that leaves me the most satisfied."

Lately, she's been dealing with a sore back. She described it as a "GS back," due to all the rotational force and the movement required in the giant slalom.

"With each year, my body is starting to complain to me," said Shiffrin, who earned Olympic gold (giant slalom) and silver (combined) at the Pyeongchang Games last February. "My back has been kind of nagging all season long. It's something we've had to manage."

There will be plenty on the line when she returns from her brief break. She holds a slight lead over Tessa Worley of France in the overall GS race. Shiffrin also has a 32-point advantage over Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein in the season-long super-G standings (one of the races in Russia is a super-G). Her priority the rest of the way will definitely be on the GS, a World Cup crown she's yet captured. Should she capture the super-G title, well, that's an added bonus since she only recently started training for the speed discipline.

"I'm having more fun this season than I ever have, which is awesome," Shiffrin said.

This will keep her motivated down the stretch: "I'm looking forward," Shiffrin said, "to getting to a beach — somewhere."

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The state of Vermont did not provide adequate oversight to prevent the massive fraud that occurred in ski area and other development projects funded by foreign investors' money through a special visa program, a state audit has found.

The financial scandal first revealed in 2016, which became the state's largest fraud case, shook Vermont and the economically depressed region called the Northeast Kingdom.

In 2018, Vermont's former attorney general asked for an audit of the state's involvement in the projects at Jay Peak and Burke resorts to address the loss of trust in state government from the fraud, State Auditor Doug Hoffer wrote in the report released on Thursday. The audit was completed after the legal proceedings concluded, he wrote.

The findings should not be entirely surprising, Hoffer wrote.

“In short, we found a pattern of misplaced trust, unfortunate decision-making, lengthy delays, and missed opportunities to prevent or minimize fraud,” Hoffer wrote.

Ariel Quiros, a Miami businessman and former owner of two Vermont ski resorts, was sentenced in 2022 to five years in prison for his role in a failed plan to build a biotechnology plant in Newport using tens of millions of dollars raised through the EB-5 visa program. Under the program, foreigners invest $500,000 in U.S. a project that creates at least 10 jobs in exchange for a chance to earn permanent U.S. residency. William Stenger, the former president of Jay Peak, and William Kelly, an advisor to Quiros, each got sentences of 18 months.

But the fraud encompassed seven other projects at Jay Peak and Burke resorts.

In 2016, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission and the state of Vermont alleged that Quiros and Stenger took part in a “massive eight-year fraudulent scheme.” The civil allegations involved misusing more than $200 million of about $400 million raised from foreign investors for various ski area developments through the EB-5 visa program “in Ponzi-like fashion.”

In a Ponzi scheme, money provided by new investors is used to pay high returns to early-stage investors to suggest the enterprise is prosperous. The scheme collapses when required redemptions exceed new investments.

Quiros and Stenger settled civil charges with the SEC, with Quiros surrendering more than $80 million in assets, including the two resorts. In the seven projects at Jay Peak and Burke, “construction was done but not always to the specifications or at the costs told to the investors. Significant funds were simply misused,” the report said.

Under the EB-5 program, the federal government designates regional centers to promote economic growth and oversee and monitor sponsored projects, the report states. Most regional centers are privately owned but the Vermont Regional Center was state government-run.

The center, which was the EB-5 office within the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, had competing duties: to market and promote EB-5 projects and to regulate them, the auditor's report states.

"Experts and policymakers have long warned against such arrangements for fear that an agency relied upon to help a project succeed may be reluctant to exercise its regulatory powers. In addition, a marketing office may not have the skill sets needed to properly regulate complex financial arrangements such as EB-5. Unfortunately, this proved all too true at ACCD,” the report states.

Last July, the state of Vermont agreed to pay $16.5 million to settle all pending and potential lawsuits from foreign investors in the development projects.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is still determining the immigration status of the Jay Peak and Burke investors, Goldstein wrote. At least 424 of 564 Jay Peak investors have already received green cards and the state is working to increase the chances that many more do, she wrote.

FILE - The water park at Jay Peak resort in Jay, Vt., April 18, 2016. A state audit has concluded Thursday, March 28, 2024, that Vermont did not provide adequate oversight to prevent the massive fraud that occurred in ski area and other development projects funded by foreign investors' money through a special visa program. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke, File)