Mikaela Shiffrin at the Beijing 2022 Olympics. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)US alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin took to social media on Friday to address her previous day’s posts, saying they weren’t intended for the haters but for the people getting hate. “I truly believe that if you try to address the haters by hating on the haters, it really only continues to spread hate and it doesn’t fix the problem,” the two-time Olympic gold medalist said. “The haters are there because they have decided they want to hate you and you’re really not going to do anything to stop hating you, so you might as well not waste your energy on that.” On Thursday, the 26-year-old posted several screenshots on her Instagram Stories with the first four showing words and phrases written in text filled with harsh criticism, including “Choker” … “ Can’t handle the pressure” … “Arrogant”… “Disgrace. Unacceptable.” Shiffrin failed to medal in all four individual alpine skiing events she participated at the Beijing Games, registering a did-not-finish (DNF) in three of them.“The people out there who are experiencing any kind of those messages, those comments, that make you feel about this small, that make you feel like your entire self-worth is summed up in awful sentence sent by an awful person who thinks awful things about you,” the 26-year-old wrote. “The whole premise of it, I don’t really understand, but that message, that was meant for you guys to get up and to keep going. Get out of bed the next day even though you’re getting these messages that make you feel awful… awful. “That’s okay, they’re always going to be there and you can choose to take them and dwell on them and let them make you want to retire, let them make you want to disappear and just never be seen again or you can just say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great sense of humor and I’ve got a lot more to give to this world, so back off and let me do my thing,’ and I think a lot of you out there who might be experiencing these hate messages — I think a lot of you have that fire in you, so you just go for it and don’t send a message to your haters.”They don’t deserve your time being wasted on them. You just spread that message to the next person getting hate.”Shiffrin will have one more shot at a medal as she is scheduled to compete in the mixed team parallel slalom competition on Saturday.