Mikaela Shiffrin suffered a puncture wound in a crash at the Killington World Cup just after Thanksgiving, forcing her to take a step back from competition to recover. Her recovery timeline is still unknown. It’s not clear if or when she’ll be returning to race this season.
Shiffrin’s newest episode of her YouTube series, Moving Right Along (Season 3, Episode 2), covers her journey through the injury and the early stages of the recovery process. It doesn’t reveal any new information related to her injury or her timeline, but it does give us a look into the entire process.
Mikaela Shiffrin:
“Hi Everyone…
I’m always so excited to ski at Killington. It’s one of the most meaningful weekends of the year for me, and always coincides with Thanksgiving – so it’s a time to reflect on what we’re grateful for, spend time with family, and ski at one of my absolute favorite World Cup venues with the best fans in the world. This year there was a lot of talk about 100 victories…it was almost like people expected it to happen. I’ve always said anything can happen in this sport and nothing is given. I guess this crash in the GS was just another example of that. We’re racing at our limit, and there are fine margins in this sport. It’s a difference of just a couple of centimeters between crashing like that or winning a run. We have to be on the limit, and crashes do happen. If I was just a few feet lower or higher, I might have missed the gate entirely and just skied away. There’s a fair amount of luck involved. On one hand, you create your own luck through preparation and hard work. On the other hand, I have gratitude for not going through that gate with my neck or having the impact hit my colon.
I’ve had plenty of luck in my career. You can see how easily it goes wrong and how hard it is to just make it to the finish with a fast time on a daily basis. I’m grateful for how many times I’ve been able to do that. All of the headlines were talking about how heartbreaking the crash was…you know, on home soil for what could have been my 100th World Cup victory…but I was REALLY happy about my skiing.
So, what’s next? Time will tell… Thanks for joining me for the journey!
Love, Miki“