She came back after a six-week break from competition, took on the Are slalom slope under her skis and won as if she had never been away. Mikaela Shiffrin celebrated her comeback in the Alpine World Cup in a way that probably only she can. After just four days of training, the 28-year-old American won the World Cup slalom in Sweden on Sunday with an incredible 1.24 seconds lead – and thus also secured the small crystal ball as the best slalom runner of the season.
The competitors bowed to the Snow Queen, who achieved her 96th World Cup victory in Are and who was once again in a league of her own. Behind her there was a race for the places on the winner’s podium in the blink of an eye, in which the German Lena Dürr was unlucky. She was only beaten by the Swiss Michelle Gisin by a hundredth of a second and came fourth. Croatian Zrinka Ljutic secured second place, crossing the finish line just a tenth of a second ahead of Gisin. Emma Aicher, the second best German, took a good seventh place (+1.91).
Shiffrin had skipped the giant slalom the day before because she wasn’t yet able to ski without pain again – and didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. She had written off the victory in the overall World Cup that had been tangible just a few weeks ago and was now only theoretically possible.
“It was a matter of life and death”
Before her fall in the Cortina d’Ampezzo descent on January 26th, Shiffrin had clearly led the overall standings – but in the meantime she had to miss eleven races and is now in third place with 1309 points behind the Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami (1654) and the Italian Federica Brignone (1372) fell behind. “I would have liked to fight for the big crystal ball,” confessed the five-time overall World Cup winner in Are. But realistically she has to ask: “Where am I?”
Ultimately, she can consider herself lucky that she “only” injured the medial ligament in her left knee during her violent fall and that she was able to come back this season, although she was still struggling with pain.
However, her problems were mere trivialities compared to the suffering of her friend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. “It was a matter of life and death,” Shiffrin vividly reported Kilde’s condition in the first hours after his major crash on the descent from Wengen on January 13th. Shiffrin had seen the race on television and rushed straight to the clinic in Innsbruck to be at his side. “Holy shit” was her first reaction. Calling his leg injury a “cut” was a joke, Shiffrin said of the aftermath of Kilde’s accident, in which nerves and muscles in his right lower leg were severed.
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The fact that she had to go into rehab shortly afterwards can be seen as a nasty irony of fate – the power couple of alpine ski racing as a rehab couple. In the meantime, both of them thought about quitting this “life-threatening” sport. But now the thoughts have turned again. After weeks in a wheelchair, Kilde was able to make his first attempts to walk again, which proves what a strong fighter he is. And Shiffrin used the break from racing to improve on the piano. She plays the guitar anyway. Make the best use of time – that’s her message. Not just between the slalom poles.
