Two-time Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin is on the mend after her ski crash last year, although her journey has been far from easy. Shiffrin has revealed her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the severe incident that occurred in November.

On November 30, during a giant slalom race at the FIS World Cup in Killington, Vermont, Shiffrin suffered a puncture wound to her abdomen. This injury led to significant damage to her oblique muscle after she fell while leading the race, crashing into two gates.

“It’s honestly kind of difficult to explain what the pain felt like,” Shiffrin expressed in The Players’ Tribune. “But it felt like… not only was there a knife stabbing me, but the knife was actually still inside of me.”

While facing physical setbacks, Shiffrin’s mental struggles were equally challenging. She candidly admitted she has been grappling with PTSD, which has taken a toll on her confidence.

After returning to the World Cup circuit on January 30, she chose to skip the giant slalom event.

“I can admit that there were some extremely low moments,” Shiffrin stated. “Times when I started second-guessing myself or was critical of myself because I felt like I was letting what happened mess with me so much.”

On particularly hard days, she found herself questioning her motivation for racing, thinking, “Honestly, I couldn’t care less if I ever race again.”

Shiffrin is proactively working with a psychologist to tackle her anxieties. Through these sessions, she has connected her recent crash to past traumatic events, including a different crash in early 2024, her fiancé Aleksandar Aamodt Kilde’s severe ski crash in January 2024, and the loss of her father in an accident five years ago.

“Maybe when I crashed and got that puncture wound, that was kind of a perfect-storm situation for PTSD to take hold,” she said.

Despite the hurdles, Shiffrin remains hopeful, stating that she is “getting back to a place of joy” and can now smile with appreciation, feeling like herself again.