MILAN — She’s the GOAT who chokes on Olympic slopes.

Mikaela Shiffrin was painfully reminded it’s nearly impossible to ski with a nervous heart in your throat and the five Olympic rings shackled tightly around your boots.

In a new event that seemed invented for her benefit, presenting a golden opportunity to cure a wicked case of performance anxiety at the Winter Games, Shiffrin crossed the finish line Tuesday in the team combined race and gave an oh-bleep look of exasperation that required no explanation.

She knew.

Shiffrin had been shut out from winning a medal for her seventh Olympic race in a row, dating back four years, to an experience at the Winter Games in China so bad that she sat down on the snow and cried. 

“I didn’t find a comfort level that allows me to produce full speed,” Shiffrin told reporters who had anticipated a triumphant start to her Olympic redemption tour in Cortina d’Ampezzo. “So I’m going to have to learn what to do …”

Wait … what?

The winner of 108 World Cup races, the most in history, needs remedial training in slalom turns?

This was beyond bad. It was befuddling.

It was Tom Brady throwing four picks in the Super Bowl.

It was Pele suffering the embarrassment of an own goal during the World Cup.

It was Billie Jean King double-faulting to lose match point at Wimbledon.

“I want to be careful not to make excuses,” Shiffrin said, “because it’s not really an excuse …”

Stop right there, GOAT.

This event was stacked in Shiffrin’s favor. Her partner on the A-team for the USA was Breezy Johnson, who won downhill gold on the Olimpia delle Tofane course only 48 hours earlier.

Breezy went like the wind during the morning half of the competition, finishing first in the downhill, setting up Shiffrin to finish their quest for gold by blowing away the other 24 teams remaining on the mountain.

“We, as racers, intimately know what it is to have an Olympic dream, hold somebody else’s in your hand, and try to ski fast with it,” Johnson said.

Shiffrin skied as if she were trying to carry a bowl of chicken soup down the slope without spilling a drop.

Was this the same woman who had won seven of eight slalom races on the World Cup circuit this season?

Not even close.

I’ve seen drivers creeping along to find a parking space at Costco on a weekend afternoon make faster turns.

When anywhere in the top 10 would’ve been enough to earn her and Johnson the gold, Shiffrin produced the 15th-fastest time.

It was a nightmare that played out in slow motion.

The last time we saw her finish so low on the leaderboard in a slalom race that she successfully negotiated her way around every gate was way back in 2012, when the world had no clue a teenager from Vail was fixing to become the undisputed queen of the mountain.

Shiffrin will be forced to stew until next week for her individual races in the giant slalom and slalom to find a dolce vita vibe in the Italian Alps.

After stupid cold and bad snow in South Korea during the 2018 Winter Games, then the house-arrest discomfort of competing within the pandemic bubble of 2022 in China, Shiffrin arrived in Cortina over the weekend, vowing to slay the dragons of her dark Olympic past.

“Like Billie Jean King said,” Shiffrin insisted, “pressure is a privilege.”

And I believed she was ready, in a good headspace.

Well, it’s easy to fool a knucklehead like me. Here’s hoping Shiffrin wasn’t trying to fool herself.