Mikaela Shiffrin to return to Alpine Ski World Cup

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Mikaela Shiffrin will race Sunday for the first time since spraining a ligament in her left leg in a downhill accident on Jan. 26.

Shiffrin will compete in her trademark event, the slalom, at this season’s penultimate World Cup stop in Åre, Sweden.

Shiffrin will miss her second favorite event, giant slalom, on Saturday due to a lack of quality training to recover. She has had three slalom training sessions so far, and while she felt good, she said she was “almost close to normal.”

“There are things that need to be checked along the way with this injury,” she said. “And if we weren’t meeting those goals at any point, all we had to do was slow down the process. So we moved into an area around last week where we were finally able to actually meet them. We added a little more length and intensity to the combination slalom course. I think yesterday was my first session of so-called race-intensity skiing. ”

Ole is a memorable venue for Shiffrin. It was here that she won her first World Cup in 2012 at the age of 17, and last March she broke the alpine skiing World Cup win record of 86.

On January 26, Shiffrin sprained ligaments in her left knee and ankle in a downhill race crash in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

She missed the next 10 races of the World Cup, although she intended to skip some of them, during which time Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland and Federica Brignone of Italy passed Shiffrin for the overall World Cup title. took the lead.

The overall award is the biggest award of the year in ski racing, taking into account the results of all disciplines for the season from October to March.

Shiffrin, a five-time overall champion, is one shy of the women’s record and is 385 points behind Gut Behrami in the standings. The race winner will be awarded her 100 points in descending order starting with her 1 point for 30th place.

Gut-Behrami, 32, leads Brignone by 326 points and is in a good position with six races left to become the oldest woman to win the overall title.

The final four races of the season will be broadcast live at the World Cup Finals in Saalbach, Austria on March 16-17 (slalom and GS) and March 22-23 (super-G and downhill). peacock.

Shiffrin announced Friday that she would not compete in the super-G or downhill at the World Cup finals, which would mathematically eliminate her from competing for the overall title.

Even if she had competed in these races, Gut-Behrami would have needed to score more than 60 points per race to pass her.

Shiffrin will win her eighth career season title in slalom unless she scores 13 points in the final two slaloms or Germany’s Lena Duerr wins both races.

Shiffrin can match the record for most titles in a season in this event, shared by Lindsey Vonn (downhill) and Ingemar Stenmark (giant slalom and slalom).

Shiffrin’s main slalom rival, Petra Vlhova of Slovakia, suffered a season-ending knee injury in a race crash on January 20th.

Shiffrin won seven World Cup races this season, increasing her total to 95 wins.