Mikaela Shiffrin questioned whether she’d be able to race again this season after a Nov. 30 giant slalom crash, let alone get back on top of a World Cup podium so soon with a record-extending 100th career victory last Sunday.
Shiffrin dissected the win in an in-depth interview for a Stifel Snow Show episode that aired Saturday (and is on the NBC Sports YouTube channel). The extended interview is atop this post.
“There’s so much more meaning to this one than a number or a record,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a relief, honestly. I would say it’s almost a surprise after everything that’s happened in the last months. I honestly did not anticipate 100 was going to happen this season, so I’m thankful.”
Shiffrin stayed relatively injury-free for the first 12 years of her World Cup career.
But in 2024, she sustained two significant crashes, including spraining left leg ligaments in a downhill spill last January. She missed an 11-race stretch last winter.
Then this season, she was sidelined from competition for two months after the Nov. 30 crash. She sustained a puncture wound that tore oblique muscles and nearly pierced organs.
“It has been feeling very similar, to be honest, to this kind of mental fog that I had the year after my dad passed (in 2020),” she said. “So communicating that, talking with my psychologist, talking with teammates, letting anybody and everybody kind of give me advice, and the main thing that everyone said is the only way to move through this is to get the exposure and to keep doing it (ski racing).”
Shiffrin’s next races are a World Cup giant slalom and slalom in Åre, Sweden, next weekend.
She then turns 30 on March 13 before the World Cup Finals from March 22-27 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
