The good news for Mikaela Shiffrin is that she no longer feels pain in her abdomen 2½ months after a deep puncture wound nearly pierced her colon.
The challenge now is getting back to top form as the American chases a record-breaking 16th medal at the world championships in the slalom on Saturday.
Shiffrin has only raced twice since she was impaled by an unknown object during her giant slalom crash in Killington, Vermont, on Nov. 30. She finished 10th in a World Cup slalom in Courchevel, France, last month, and paired with Breezy Johnson to win gold in the new team combined event on Tuesday.
The crash caused severe trauma to Shiffrin’s oblique muscles and left her insides draining out of the side of her abdomen.
“It doesn’t still hurt. And that’s a lovely thing about muscles: As they heal, the pain does go away,” Shiffrin said. “It’s different from ligaments and knees and things you have to deal with for quite a long time after. The rest of my body hurts because I’m not really used to skiing still.”
Even without much racing in her legs, Shiffrin was able to put down the third-fastest slalom run in the combined, 0.39 seconds behind Swiss skier Wendy Holdener, who had the fastest run and will be among her rivals on Saturday.
That was enough to earn Shiffrin her 15th career medal at worlds, matching the record set by German skier Christl Cranz in the 1930s. It was also Shiffrin’s eighth gold in the biggest skiing event outside of the Olympics — with four of those victories having come in slalom.
Shiffrin has medaled in all six of her slalom races at the worlds, starting as a 17-year-old in 2013 when she won the first of four consecutive golds. Then she took bronze in 2021 and silver in 2023.
Shiffrin also won Olympic gold in slalom at the age of 18 at the 2014 Sochi Games and then added a gold in giant slalom and a silver in combined at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
But these are different times for Shiffrin, who recently shared details of the “PTSD-eque” fears she has had since her crash — which prompted her not to defend her giant slalom title on Thursday.
“We’re working through the mental stuff,” Shiffrin said after the combined.
Hirscher has more overall titles but calls Shiffrin ‘the greatest of all time’
Shiffrin’s remarkable consistency at worlds — she has also won at least one gold in all seven championships she has competed in — is unrivaled.
So are her 99 World Cup wins and 62 in slalom — both records among men and women.
One of the few big skiing statistics that Shiffrin is not the leader in is overall World Cup titles. Her five big crystal gloves put her second in the women’s ranks behind Annemarie Moser-Pröll’s six.
But Marcel Hirscher, the Austrian who holds the record with eight overall titles, has no doubt where Shiffrin stands in the pantheon of skiing greats.
“I can think back to Alberto Tomba, Hermann Maier, Bode Miller, Marcel Hirscher, Marco Odermatt. All of those are great names,” Hirscher said. “But for me personally, I know Mika for such a long time and (with) everything she achieves, she’s just the greatest of all time because she won everything.”
And, as Hirscher noted, at 29 Shiffrin is not even that old for a skier yet.
“If she wants, she can ski another five or six years,” Hirscher said. “So just, hats off.”
Without Vlhova, younger skiers like Ljutic and Rast could challenge Shiffrin
Without longtime rival Petra Vlhova, who is still out after tearing the ACL in her right knee last season during a giant slalom in her native Slovakia, Shiffrin’s biggest challengers in the slalom could be from younger racers who have broken through recently or during her absence.
Zrinka Ljutic has won three of the past four World Cup slaloms and turned 21 last month.
Camille Rast claimed her first victory in the slalom in Killington the day after Shiffrin crashed at the Vermont resort. Then she followed it up by winning again in the night slalom in Flachau and now leads the World Cup slalom standings.
Lara Colturi, who is only 18, has also been on the slalom podium this season.
If Shiffrin wins and earns her fifth gold in the same discipline, she’ll also match another record set by Cranz, who won five golds in combined.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
