Even when she’s not winning, Mikaela Shiffrin manages to impress.
Just 61 days after a crash that left her with a deep gash in her obliques and put the rest of the season in jeopardy, Shiffrin finished 10th in a slalom race Thursday in Courchevel, France. After finishing the first run in fifth place, she lost ground in the second, and her combined time was 2.04 seconds behind winner Zrinka Ljutic of Croatia.
‘It felt challenging, and the top women, they’re skiing amazing,’ Shiffrin said after the race. ‘I’m so happy to be back competing with them. Hopefully I get faster in the next weeks.’
Still, as you watched her lean into the course, her core constantly working as she shifted her weight from one ski to the other to make the quick turns required in slalom, it’s a wonder she fared as well as she did. Shiffrin was impaled, by what she still doesn’t know, when she crashed Nov. 30 during the second run of a giant slalom in Killington, Vermont. The puncture wound was 7 centimeters deep, making it difficult even to sit up initially.
She smiled after she finished the second run, waving to the cheering fans and making a heart shape with her gloved hands.
‘It was a really good, or very important, step in my recovery, to see how I’m stacking up with the top skiers in the world and to see what I can work on to improve my skiing,’ she said. ‘Also, before the world championships, it was so important to get this start.’
When Shiffrin announced her return last week, she said she’d regained her strength and her muscles were firing again. But she needs to regain her timing, and that rust was evident Thursday. She got off-balance occasionally in both runs and didn’t cut the tight, smooth line that’s her trademark.
‘When I watched video from the first run, (it was) a little bit of my rhythm or timing to catch the track the right way. I was just fighting it a little bit,’ she said. ‘That’s not something I could fix today. I had to race today to know that.’
More training will help – Shiffrin didn’t get back on snow until Jan. 1 – and she’ll have about two weeks before she races at the world championships, in Saalbach, Austria. Though worlds begin Feb. 4, Shiffrin is planning to race the giant slalom and slalom, the last two races on the program.
The giant slalom is Feb. 13 and the slalom two days later.
Shiffrin has also left open the possibility of doing the team combined, an event that will pair a technical specialist with a speed specialist. (Think someone who excels in slalom, like Shiffrin, and someone who’s good at downhill.) But she said that will depend on training.
“All of my teammates have been showing incredible speed this season, and I would be lucky and so excited to pair with any one of them for Team Combined if I’m in the position to be able to race!” she said earlier this week.
Shiffrin holds the all-time record for World Cup wins and her next will be her 100th, a milestone unlikely ever to be matched. But as she returns from an injury that could have been so much worse, that number is the least of her concerns.
Eight weeks ago, she was struggling to sit up and feared she might not be able to return this season. Now she’s in the top 10 at a World Cup and contemplating her schedule at the world championships.
‘I’m catching up to the fastest in the world, so I have a lot of work to do,’ she said. ‘But I’m happy to be here and look forward to trying that.’