Shiffrin returns to action, recalls boyfriend's 'life or death' crash
Sports
Shiffrin was leading the overall World Cup standings before her crash at the end of January
Paris (AFP) – Mikaela Shiffrin returns to competitive skiing in Are this weekend, six weeks after a heavy crash and with her thoughts for boyfriend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde who survived a "life or death" fall while racing.
Shiffrin, who turns 29 next week, was leading the overall World Cup standings before her crash at the end of January on the Olympia delle Tofane course, which will be used for the 2026 Olympics.
Since then she has had to watch as Lara Gut-Behrami overhauled her total and built up a lead. Shiffrin is now third in the overall standings, 385 points behind the Swiss, and concedes that her hopes of a sixth overall World Cup title are over.
"I will be competing on Sunday in the slalom," said Shiffrin in a video press conference on Friday.
"I will compete in slalom at the World Cup finals and I am crossing my fingers to be able to prep for the GS (giant slalom) at World Cup finals but that we will have to determine later.
"I will not be skiing any speed events." Shiffrin counts her blessings that she knew from the moment of her crash that her injuries were not too severe.
"It never crossed my mind that this would be the end of my career because I did a body scan right off the bat," she said.
"I knew there was something wrong with my knee, that's where I felt the pain, but I knew my neck was ok, I never lost consciousness, and my back felt like my back (which has been a problem for her) but it didn't feel worse. The ankle came into things a little bit later."
Two weeks prior to her crash, Shiffrin had watched on television as her boyfriend, Norwegian skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde hurtled into the netting at 120km/h in Wengen, sustaining a bad cut and nerve damage to his right calf and two torn ligaments with a severe laceration in his dislocated right shoulder.
"It was a life or death situation for a good eight hours immediately afer his crash with that kind of 'cut'," said Shiffrin. "'Cut' doesn't really... there's not a word for what he had. It was life or death.
'Slow bleed'
"In that kind of experience you don't have a choice. For me the emotion never really hit me immediately.
"Watching him on TV, it was like 'holy shit!'. But after that it was just 'how do I get to him and what can I do to help?' and trying to be there when he woke up as his family couldn't be there until the next day."
"He is progressing really well now, starting to be able to walk a bit, starting to activate his shoulder, it's really minimal movements with the shoulder. It was literally blown apart. "So, it's a long road and that's all we know."
Meanwhile, Shiffrin, whose 95 wins is the most by a skier in World Cup history, said that the pace of her own recovery from the knee and ankle injuries she sustained in her high-speed fall made it clear that she could not compete with Gut-Behrami.
"As soon as I realised I would not be able to make it to Andorra (Feb 10/11) that changed everything," she said. "We had to come to terms that the overall title would be very much of a stretch.
"Lara has been stunning this season, so consistent, so strong. "I would love to fight for the overall but at a certain point i just need to admit where I am this season and that's not a possibility.
"I just haven't had any control over it. It's like a slow bleed. "As I came to terms with that I thought 'let's stop the bleed here because it's excruciating watching this unfold and making myself angry'."
Shiffrin, however, can end the season with a flourish as she still leads the slalom discipline standings - although she only managed her first "race intensity" outing last week.
