Multiple narratives accrue from a single Olympic event, sometimes across hours, minutes, even seconds. Tuesday morning at the Milan Cortina Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, women contested the Alpine combined, in which one skier first races a downhill and then later her teammate races a run of slalom. Their times are added, a simple metric. It is the coolest of concepts, turning an individual sport into a team game. But it can also be the most enervating, piling the pressure of supporting a friend on top of Olympic pressure. "Holding somebody else's [Olympic dream] in your hand," said American Breezy Johnson, "And trying to ski fast with it, is a lot of pressure."

So it was that in the morning Johnson herself ripped down the same Olimpia delle Tofane downhill course on which she had won a gold medal 48 hours earlier (and been unfortunately but expectedly overshadowed by Lindsey Vonn's terrible crash). She finished first among the 28 starters, .06 seconds in front of Ariane Raedler of Austria, a terrific effort given the potential for a colossal letdown and the wearing effects of 48 hours of celebration, formal and otherwise. Her slalom partner would be Mikaela Shiffrin, her close friend and the best slalom racer in history.

It seemed to be a scenario which Johnson had positioned herself to win a second gold medal, and for Shiffrin to win her third (but her first since the giant slalom in PyeongChang in 2018), and to begin the process of burying her 2022 Games, in which she—stunningly, painfully, emotionally—failed to complete the slalom, combined slalom (an individual event at the time), and giant slalom and left Beijing with no medals at all, only to later resume her dominance in slalom, making the Olympic bagel even more confounding.

There was more: American Jackie Wiles, who had finished an agonizing fourth in the downhill, skied into fourth place behind Johnson in the combined downhill. That finish left her in position to challenge for her first Olympic medal, with her partner, Paula Moltzan, also seeking her first medal. And more: At last year's World Championships, Moltzan and teammate Lauren Macuga—who is out this season with a knee injury—finished in that same, dreaded fourth-place spot.

The afternoon slalom unfolded in light snowfall. A German team moved into first place, anchored in slalom by ascendent, 22-year-old star Emma Aicher, two days after a silver in downhill. Moltzan raced her team into second, and then was bumped to third by Austria's Katharina Huber in slalom, partnered with downhiller Raedler. Shiffrin remained, starting with that advantage of .06 seconds from Johnson's downhill. Consider: Shiffrin has won seven of eight slalom races on this seasons' World Cup circuit, and finished a narrow second in other, as close to a sure thing as there is in the sport.

Wiles sat in third, expecting to get bumped—again—to fourth, said afterward, "We were asking for a miracle."

Moltzan said, "If you let Mikaela run that course, I think she'd come down in the lead by at least a second."

She did not. Shiffrin skied a technically sound slalom, but skied it slowly, losing time all the way down. She skied, as NBC's Steve Porino assessed, "with tension." Only 18 skiers completed the slalom: Shiffrin finished 15th, and she and Johnson finished fourth. Had Shiffrin skied only the 13th-fastest slalom, it would have been good enough for gold. For historical perspective, according to Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post the last time Shiffrin finished as low as 15th in a World Cup slalom was in 2012, when Shiffrin was 15 year old. Two years later she won her first and only Olympic gold medal in slalom, a vanishing 12 years ago.

In the finish corral, Shiffrin told U.S. journalists, "I didn't find a comfort level that allowed me to produce full speed. So I'm going to have to learn how to do that, what to adjust, in the short time we have before the other tech races." (The giant slalom is Sunday, and the slalom next Wednesday). Shiffrin is deeply aware of the Olympic cloud hanging over her head; everyone is. "I'm careful not to make excuses," she said.  "It's a sport with a lot of fine margins and variables. And this kind of thing happens more often than not in training, where it's like, "Oh, I don't feel comfortable enough."

And that is fair. Shiffrin is very much entitled to be the narrator of her own experience and to judge it on her own terms. But the statistics strongly suggest that "this kind of thing" almost never happens to her in World Cup races, which might lack the unique pressure of the Olympic Games, but they are the highest level of an exacting sport and Shiffrin is the most accomplished Alpine skier in history. So the Olympic drought that started in Beijing and continued in Cortina has been, and continues to be  baffling.

But, another thing. Even as Shiffrin explained her own experience, she heaped praise on Johnson for her downhill run. "I was so excited watching Breezy this morning," she said. "It was after winning gold in the downhill and then doing 48 hours of media, and I was so inspired by that."  She is unfailing generous with praise and respect, powerful qualities. (She also knows from whence she speaks: After winning her GS gold in 2018, that same 48-hour media blitz she described seemed to wear her down, and may have contributed to a surprising fourth-place finish in the slalom).

Moltzan, who trains and travels with Shiffrin and battles her for (mostly giant slalom) podiums, said, "She's been so gracious and kind and supportive. She is a beautiful winner, but also really a beautiful...loser. And that takes a lot of skill and it's really difficult."

Two races lie ahead for Shiffrin: After a gruesome giant slalom injury 15 months ago (she was impaled by a gate), she has recently returned to the podium in that event and is at least a medal threat, if not a favorite. She has been largely unbeatable in slalom. It is challenging for anyone watching or chronicling her performances to reconcile her last four Olympic slaloms and giant slaloms with her legacy, which will endure. But she is here again, surrounded by rings, anticipated. Nothing is granted, only earned.