These big expectations and big falls are part of any Olympics. This is particularly true for the winter games, when the crowd, in spite of itself, is always watching for the next terrible crash. What was striking about this particular saga was how much of it happened hors piste, beyond the bounds of the run—whether on Twitter, where Shiffrin responded directly to an avalanche of insults and attacks, or literally off to the side of the slope at the Yanqing skiing center, where the camera stayed locked on her silent emotional breakdown.