Paris: Mikaela Shiffrin returns to competitive skiing in Are this weekend, six weeks after a serious crash and with her thoughts on boyfriend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, who survived a “life-or-death” fall while competing.
Shiffrin, who turns 29 next week, led the overall World Cup standings before her crash in late January at the 2026 Olympia delle Tofane course.
From then on, she had to watch as Lara Gut-Behrami overhauled her total and built a lead. Shiffrin is now third overall, 385 points behind the Swiss, and admits her hopes of a sixth overall World Cup title are over.
“I’ll be racing the slalom on Sunday,” Shiffrin said in a video press conference Friday.
“I will be racing the slalom at the World Cup Finals and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can prepare for the GS (Giant Slalom) at the World Cup Finals, but we will have to determine that later.
“I won’t be skiing any speed races.” Shiffrin is counting her blessings that she knew from the moment of the crash that her injuries were not too serious.
“I never thought it would be the end of my career because I had a body scan right at the beginning,” she said.
“I knew something was wrong with my knee, I felt pain there but I knew my neck was fine, I never passed out and my back felt like a back (which was a problem for her) but it didn’t . I don’t feel any worse. The ankle got into it a little later.”
Two weeks before the accident, Shiffrin watched on television as her boyfriend, Norwegian skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, crashed into a net at 120 km/h in Wengen, suffering a severe cut and nerve damage to his right calf and two torn ligaments with severe injuries. laceration on dislocated right shoulder.
“It was a life or death situation for a good eight hours immediately after his crash with that kind of ‘cut,'” Shiffrin said. “‘Cut’ actually… there’s no word for what he had. It was life or death.”
“You don’t have a choice in an experience like that. For me, the emotions never hit me immediately.”
“Watching him on TV, it was like ‘Damn!’. But then it was just ‘how do I get to him and what can I do to help him?’ and he tried to be there when he woke up because his family couldn’t be there until the next day.”
“He’s doing really well now, he’s starting to be able to walk a little bit, he’s starting to activate his shoulder, it’s really minimal movement with his shoulder. It’s literally blown away.” So it’s a long way and that’s all we know. “
Meanwhile, Shiffrin, whose 95 wins are the most by a female skier in World Cup history, said the pace of her recovery from knee and ankle injuries suffered in a high-speed fall made it clear she could not compete with Gut. -Behrami.
“Once I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it to Andorra (February 10), that changed everything,” she said. “We had to accept that the overall title would be very exciting.
“Lara has been amazing this season, so consistent, so strong. “I would love to fight for the overall, but at some point I just have to admit where I am this season and that’s not an option.”
“I just had no control over it. It’s like a slow bleed.” When I came to terms with it, I thought ‘let’s stop the bleeding because it’s excruciating to watch it unfold and get upset’.”
However, Shiffrin can end the season with a bang as she still leads the slalom standings – although she only completed her first “race intensive” outing last week.
Shiffrin returns to action
