The 1st December in Killington should have been a celebration of just another milestone. A celebration in her home resort, with the local fans who loved her just as much as she loved them. After she missed the opportunity in the giant slalom race on Saturday, Sunday was sure to be Mikaela Shiffrin’s day. Only it wasn’t.
As Shiffrin went down as the last racer to ensure her victory, she crashed and ended up in the safety net. After being transported to the hospital, she let her fans know on social media that no bone was broken, no ligament torn; she just got stabbed with some object (probably a pole).
Everybody felt relief; she would be winning races in no time.
Less than a week later, however, the superstar dampened the fans‘ hopes, explaining the true nature of her injury. Not only was it more severe than a slight puncture, she was actually lucky to be alive. The object that stabbed her went pretty deep, missing her internal organs by a tiny margin, one more millimeter, and it would tear her colon. Furthermore, the wound got inflamed and would not stop bleeding. To add to the misery, terrible pain became Shiffrin’s constant companion for the following days. The injury tore her oblique. Obliques are part of the human core, the muscle structure you need to walk or even sit and stand upright. With such an injury, every movement was painful. And it would not heal.
People kept asking her doctors when they could expect her to start training again. Nobody would provide an answer as she lay in her bed cleaning the wound with a special tool, a vacuum cleaner. Then, last Thursday, Shiffrin told her medical team that she was feeling a little bit “under the weather,” so they decided to do another surgery. They tried to avoid surgery because opening up the wound meant more cuts to the muscles and ligaments, but the wound needed cleaning. Obviously, the skiing queen had to learn some new vocabulary so that she could explain the nature of this complication to her fans on social media:
“Turns out I had a little cavity deeper than the wound tract that was filled with old hematoma and wasn’t properly draining with wound vac or normal packing…so we went in to wash it out and close it with sutures and a little JP drain to keep the drainage flowing. “
During the operation, they also had to reattach a layer of obliques to the lilac crest. In lay terms, without the operation, Shiffrin’s obliques and whole core would need much more time to heal.
In the meantime, everybody hopes the wound finally starts healing properly without further complications. But Shiffrin’s comeback during this season seems less and less probable. First, the wound must heal, and last Thursday, Mikaela returned to day one of the healing process after two weeks of recovery. Only when the wound is healed can she start rehabilitation, teaching the core to be strong enough to support her walking, let alone skiing.
We do not doubt Shiffrin’s mental strength and resilience. However, at times like these, giving your body time to heal takes more courage than jumping headfirst into training. At least Mikaela and her boyfriend, Alexander Aamodt Kilde, can work on their rehabilitation together. Kilde also prepares for another surgery before he starts training. Let us wish them both less pain and more joy over the following Christmas season.
