By Pat Graham/AP
Mikaela Shiffrin's flashbacks to her November crash in a giant slalom race are happening less and less when she's training.
For her, as she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder in the discipline, that's major progress.
While the other racers compete in the GS on Tuesday at World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Shiffrin plans to squeeze in some training in the slalom. It will be the American standout's only event of the weeklong finals after not qualifying in giant slalom.
The two-time Olympic champion revealed last month that she’s suffering from PTSD after falling in the GS on Nov. 30 in Killington, Vermont. In the crash, something punctured Shiffrin's side and caused severe trauma to her oblique muscles.
Shiffrin skipped the giant slalom at world championships and has raced the discipline three times since, with her best showing 25th place.
But she's back to turning in fast sections at practice in the GS, a discipline that blends speed and technical skill.
“Training is going well. It’s actually super positive. Training has been improving day-by-day,” Shiffrin said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday night before signing autographs for fans. “I'm just trying to get back to the confidence that I was skiing with in Killington when the crash happened. That would be a big goal.”
On that day, Shiffrin was leading after the first run of the GS as she charged after her 100th World Cup win. The finish line was in sight on her final run, when she lost an edge and slid into a gate, flipping head over skis.
The all-time winningest Alpine World Cup ski racer then slammed into another gate before coming to a stop in the protective fencing. She still doesn't know what led to the puncture wound.
To get back in the starting gate, she's been working with a psychologist. Leading into world championships and the GS, she checked most of the boxes for PTSD symptoms. A few weeks later in Are, Sweden, she checked fewer.
“My processing speed and the mind-body connection has come back in a great way,” explained Shiffrin, who earned her 100th World Cup win last month in Italy. "But every now and then I’ll still have the sort of intrusive images or thoughts cross my mind of crashing or the pain. Normally, it’s in the start gate. If I’m starting to get a little bit tired in a session, I just imagine everything that could go wrong and it’s kind of an intense reaction.
“But it happens so much less often now. It does feel very true that simply exposure to doing the thing that’s pretty uncomfortable is helpful.”
Following her slalom training session Tuesday, Shiffrin will be watching as New Zealand’s Alice Robinson tries to hold off Italy’s Federica Brignone for the crystal globe in the giant slalom.
The 30-year-old Shiffrin can see glimpses of her GS form returning. She won an Olympic gold medal in the discipline at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games and 22 of her 100 World Cup victories have come in giant slalom.
“Some of my turns are competitive with the fastest in the world,” said Shiffrin, whose slalom race is Thursday. “But putting that together for a minute and 10-second GS run — that just takes time and repetition. We’ll need to try to get some days this summer with long course sets, with a lot of variation of course sets, variation of conditions. I don’t doubt that I can get to that competitive level again.
"I think a lot of my skiing is already there.”
