Mikaela Shiffrin Feels 'Like Myself Again' After PTSD from Ski Crash, Injury Recovery

Alpine ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin says she feels "like myself again" amid her recovery from her November ski crash and subsequent PTSD diagnosis.

In an essay published Friday by The Players' Tribune, Schiffrin detailed the physical and psychological trauma she battled while becoming the first athlete in Alpine skiing history to win 100 World Cups in Sestriere, Italy, this February.

On Nov. 30, 2024, Shiffrin suffered what she later described as a "stab wound" during a giant slalom race during the FIS World Cup in Killington, Vermont.

She wrote in her Players' Tribune essay that doctors told her the wound had come within approximately a millimeter of her colon.

After undergoing surgery 12 days later, Shiffrin took about six weeks away from skiing before returning to the course. She wrote that she then discovered a "strange disconnect between my body and my mind."

Shiffrin went on to detail why that disconnect is particularly dangerous in Alpine ski racing:

"When you’re trying to ski a slalom course, the gates are coming at you extremely fast, and you’ve got to be able to throw your skis from one side to the other, with precision, on an icy slope. Your skis are basically tipped up on edge anywhere between 45 to 60 degrees. And you’re going from one side to the other side insanely fast. So there’s not a lot of time to be contemplating things while you’re doing that. You have to remember — almost innately, in real time, in a split second — where you need to be going on the course. And sometimes there’s fog, or it’s a bit dark, or sometimes the surface is icy on one turn and soft on the other. So you have to process all that in the moment, immediately. Which means you absolutely need to be able to trust that what you see happening in your mind is fully connected with what you then do with your body. If that connection is off, even slightly, or there’s a misfire there, the danger level increases exponentially."

Schiffrin wrote that she "felt fine physically," but found herself distracted on her training runs by images of crashes and injuries.

Her therapist eventually suggested that Schiffrin could be suffering from PTSD, potentially stemming from both the incident at Killington and a separate crash she suffered in Cortina in January 2024.

Schiffrin wrote that the key to her recovery from that diagnosis has been continuing to train and race to prove to herself that "most of the time, everything really does end up OK."

That process led Schiffrin to make her first return to competition in January, when she finished 10th in a slalom event in Courchevel, France.

In February, she announced on social media she would not be defending her giant slalom title at the 2025 World Alpine Ski Championships in Saalbach, Austria, because she was "working through some mental obstacles in order to return to the GS start with the intensity required for racing.”

Two weeks later, Schiffrin returned to win her 100th World Cup. The following month, she set yet another record with her 156th career podium finish in a World Cup race in Åre, Sweden, in March.

Schiffrin wrote about the race in Åre: "To be at the top, at the start gate, feeling all the feelings — nervous, excited, adrenaline, and ready … ready to take it on. And to just have that experience again where I was racing like before and skiing fast? It was like I could breathe again."

Schiffrin has won two gold medals and one silver in her Olympic career. She will look to add to that hardware during the upcoming Milano Cortina Games, where she is expected to race when Alpine skiing takes place from February 7-18, 2026.