Mikaela Shiffrin plans to return to the Alpine skiing World Cup next Thursday for her first race since tearing oblique muscles in a Nov. 30 giant slalom fall.
Shiffrin, the 99-time World Cup race winner, targets a slalom in Courchevel, France, the last World Cup race before the World Championships in Saalbach, Austria, from Feb. 4-16.
“It’s been a little bit uncertain whether I could even return this season, but I’ve been able to get on snow, I’ve been able train a little bit the past week or so, and I’m actually going to be heading over to Europe in the next couple of days,” she said on TODAY on Thursday.
She said she’s not back to 100% yet.
“I think we’re going to be dealing with sort of the remnants of this injury throughout the rest of the season, but it’s not painful,” she said. “My muscles started working again. I’ve been able to get my strength built back up. So I’m in a really good place physically. The load of skiing is so high you have to sort of work your way into it.”
On Nov. 30, Shiffrin crashed in a giant slalom run in Killington, Vermont, while bidding to become the first Alpine skier to reach 100 World Cup victories.
She tumbled over and sustained a puncture wound seven centimeters deep into the right side of her abdomen, tearing into her external and internal oblique muscles.
After video review, she believed she was pierced by the tip of one of her ski poles during the fall.
In the following days, it was difficult to move the right side of her body from her hip to her ribs.
“I’m incredibly thankful the crash wasn’t worse,” Shiffrin posted Dec. 7. “It was damn close to piercing some organs that would have changed this situation entirely for the worse.”
She underwent further surgery on Dec. 12 to wash out the puncture wound.
Shiffrin then announced Jan. 8 that she returned to skiing for the first time since the fall. This past Monday, she skied with intensity for the first time.
“I just wasn’t sure how that was going to feel,” she said. “It felt pretty good. The next step is racing. That’s the next step of this recovery. So the recovery is not really over, but I’m strong enough to get back in the start gate.”
Before the crash, Shiffrin won the first two World Cup slalom races this season, extending her record to 62 victories in that discipline alone.
In her absence, Swiss Camille Rast and Croatian Zrinka Ljutic each won two World Cup slaloms.
Olympic gold medalist Petra Vlhova of Slovakia — Shiffrin’s primary slalom rival for the last several years — has been sidelined since a race fall last January and will be out through worlds.
