Mikaela Shiffrin Recovering at Home with her wound drain she named Steve, Photo/ Shauna Farnell
The World Cup record-breaker is recovering at home in Colorado and reflecting on how luck and centimeters can make or break a day.
Following unexpected surgery last Thursday, Mikaela Shiffrin doesn’t know when she’ll return to racing.
The 29-year-old skier was chasing her 100th World Cup victory during the Nov. 30 giant slalom in Killington, Vermont, when she crashed violently in the second run. She slid at high speed over a gate and into the netting, puncturing her oblique muscle.
Still unsure whether it was the gate or something else that caused the puncture, Shiffrin received immediate medical treatment. Doctors examined and cleaned the injury before giving her a wound vacuum to drain fluid. She returned home to Colorado, where she moved gingerly, taking short walks and doing minimal activity. By last Thursday, however, she felt poorly and went to the hospital, where she underwent surgery.
Surgery to Prevent Infection and Repair Muscle
“It is a deep puncture wound with quite a lot of severe muscle trauma. I was really lucky because it was probably like a millimeter from my colon,” Shiffrin said Saturday from her home in Edwards, Colorado. “The wound vac just wasn’t quite able to do the proper work to drain the fluid out of my body so it could heal. That’s where the surgery came in. We discovered a pocket of fluid that was untouched by the wound vac.”
The procedure involved clearing the fluid and addressing torn muscle near her pelvis.
“We were trying to avoid surgery because it meant opening up the area more, which causes a bit more damage,” she said. “In the end, it was probably the best option to clean out the wound and figure out what was going on in there. I was able to have my oblique reattached to my iliac crest. There was a layer that was torn away.”
While Shiffrin said she isn’t in much pain and can walk slowly and climb stairs, she admitted it’s too soon to predict when—or if—she’ll return this season.
A Longer Recovery Process
“I think if all things had gone perfectly and all the drainage just came out, we were pretty sure the season would be possible,” she said. “It just depends on how I improve over the next weeks and months. There’s not a lot of precedent for this injury in our sport.”
“We can look at acute oblique tears in baseball, hockey and other sports, but ski racing is different. When you think about the force of a GS turn or a slalom turn or a super-G turn, it’s hard to know what the muscle will withstand. We’re giving it a couple of weeks to see. I think we’ll get a clearer view each day of how it’s going to work.”
Although unsure how the injury occurred, Shiffrin knows exactly what led to the crash.
Centimeters That Change Everything
“I should have been more on my outside ski,” she said. “You’re racing at your limit, and there are fine margins in this sport. It’s a difference of just a couple of centimeters between crashing like that or winning a run. We have to be on the limit, and crashes do happen. If I was just a few feet lower or higher, I might have missed the gate entirely and just skied away.”
While disappointed to miss last weekend’s home super-G in Beaver Creek, Shiffrin remains grateful her crash and injury weren’t worse.
“There’s a fair amount of luck involved,” she said. “On one hand, you create your own luck through preparation and hard work. On the other hand, I have gratitude for not going through that gate with my neck or having the impact hit my colon.”
“I’ve had plenty of luck in my career. You can see how easily it goes wrong and how hard it is to just make it to the finish with a fast time on a daily basis. I’m grateful for how many times I’ve been able to do that.”
About the Author: Shauna Farnell
