Mikaela Shiffrin, who won gold at the Sochi Olympics along with two slalom World Cups, will race in this weekend's World Cup event in Switzerland. The 20-year-old American skier has been off the circuit for two months due to injury.
"A lot of people have been asking when I'm going to race again," wrote Shiffrin on Facebook. " I said that I hope to race at the end of February or early March, but you may have heard that the canceled slalom from Maribor has been rescheduled for Crans Montana on February 15 - and I'm going to be there!"
During a training run in December, Shiffrin crashed, tearing a ligament in her knee and suffering a bone bruise.
While Shiffrin competed earlier this season in super g races, she specializes in slalom. She has not yet competed in a World Cup downhill race, though she planned to before her injury earlier this season. When poor weather conditions forced the cancellation of a race in Maribor, Slovenia, Team Shiffrin saw she had an opportunity to return earlier. This explains her early reentry into the World Cup circuit: until the slalom race was rescheduled, the next one would not have occurred until the first week in March. Although other women's alpine World Cup races will occur before then, each one is either giant slalom, super g or downhill (i.e. not slalom).
"I think she's in a really good place," said Shiffrin's mother and coach, Eileen, according to the Denver Post. "The timing will get easier and start coming back. But her turns and her knee seem super solid. the whole thing about slalom, it's critical, you have to be in slalom gates every few days to ski at that level."
