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‘I have a stab wound, basically’: Mikaela Shiffrin explained bizarre injury after Killington crash
The all-time World Cup wins leader added that she feels "very lucky to not have worse injuries" after the high-speed crash during the event's giant slalom competition.
Only a few gates from the finish line — and the possibility of an unprecedented 100th career FIS World Cup win — U.S. skier Mikeala Shiffrin caught an edge during the second run of the giant slalom competition and suffered a painful crash into the side fencing over the weekend at Vermont’s Killington Cup.
The 21,000 screaming fans at the finish line just downhill were suddenly silenced by the horrifying sight of Shiffrin smashing through multiple gates, tumbling across the icy trail, and coming to rest in a spot that she would remain for more than 20 minutes before the Killington ski patrol took her down in a sled. Given the speed and intensity of the crash, speculation immediately began that Shiffrin had sustained a major injury requiring a long-term recovery (possibly ending her season after only a few races).
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Luckily, the 29-year-old superstar somehow managed to avoid ligament or bone damage, according to medical tests done later that evening. However, in a social media post she made later on Saturday, Shiffrin revealed that she had incurred a strange injury. Though avoiding a torn ACL or knee damage, the former Burke Mountain Academy racer had a sizable puncture on the side of her abdomen.
On Sunday, while sitting out the slalom portion of the Killington Cup due to her injuries and soreness, Shiffrin sat down for an interview with NBC Sports.
“I’m doing OK,” she began. “[The fall] was really awkward looking, and I feel a lot better now than I did on the hill last evening.”
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“We’re sort of getting a grip on what’s going on, and I’m figuring out which positions I can exist in that are not sore,” Shiffrin noted. “But [I’m] very lucky to not have worse injuries. So that’s great.”
Asked to revisit the crash and what she thinks happened, Shiffrin outlined that the fall happened at the worst possible moment.
“I think that I ever-so-lightly kind of caught my inside edge on that left-footed turn, and my skis kind of clicked together, [and] booted out,” she described. “I was purposely trying to run the most aggressive line I could there to really head directly into the entrance of that delay. And where I was running my line, it just left absolutely no room for exactly what happened.”
The interview continued as the replay of the crash played in the backgorund.
“It all went quicky, and I just went straight into that gate, and apparently the next gate as well? This is actually kind of the first time I’ve [seen] it,” Shiffrin remarked watching the video.
“Oh yeah, that was good too,” she joked sarcastically while seeing herself crash in the replay. “Oh my goodness, what an angle. This is stunning.”
“Then I was just kind of tumbling,” she added of the fall, “and I felt like I had 12 different legs on me. I think I hit the fence at actually a pretty opportune angle, so my skis didn’t really get caught in the fence, I just kind of bounced off of it. All things considered, quite lucky.”
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As to the details of her injury, Shiffrin put it simplified terminology.
“I have a stab wound, basically,” she admitted. “We’re just not totally sure how I got punctured, but probably hitting the base of the gate.”
“It’s fairly thin. We’re not totally sure how deep it is,” the U.S. skier said of the puncture. “We’re not sure on the depth of it, but basically it’s a hole sort of through my oblique. And then just like some severe muscle contusion/abrasions, and whatnot.
“It’s a really weird injury,” she concluded.
Looking ahead, Shiffrin will get a brief reprieve from the World Cup schedule, as the next event (which was set to be held at Canada’s Mont Tremblant) was recently canceled due to a lack of snow.
Beyond that, she was asked if she might be able to get back on the slopes in time for the other U.S. based World Cup event at Beaver Creek in Colorado on Dec. 14-15.
“I want to be optimistic, but just looking at the timeline of other injuries I’ve sustained — muscle strains and spasms and things of that nature — it’s taken two weeks to feel like I could ski uninhibited, and this could be kind of in-line [with that],” Shiffrin said. “It’s muscle tearing, so it’s like the most severe kind of muscle spasm you could imagine. So that will be longer than two weeks. I think it’s pretty likely that I will not be able to race in Beaver Creek, unfortunately.
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“Right now I’m pretty limited in doing anything, but we’ll see how it goes the next couple days. Trying to make it happen as quickly as possible.”
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