PITTSBURGH — The countdown is on. Right now, it’s less than one year from the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy. Already, one well-known Olympic veteran is breaking the stigma and sounding the alarm about the mental game behind the competition.
Mikaela Shiffrin is one of the skiing greats. She’s competed in three Olympic games and won three medals, two of them gold.
Shiffrin decided to come out open, honest, and vulnerable when she announced she would not compete in the giant slalom event at the World Championships this week. It’s because she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The PTSD stems from a really bad crash she took in a giant slalom race in November. Shiffrin punctured her side and suffered severe trauma to her oblique muscles.
Shiffrin made a heartfelt post on Instagram, saying “I really didn’t anticipate experiencing so much of this kind of mental/PTSD struggle in GS (giant slalom) from my injury in Killington. Like always, I tried diving into the challenge, hoping to get there by worlds. I figured my passion and longing to compete would outweigh the mental barriers. Maybe that will be the case over time, but I’m not there yet.”
Channel 11′s Jenna Harner spoke with Pittsburgh’s Dr. Aimee Kimball. She served as the mental health coach for the USA Women’s Olympic hockey team at the Beijing Olympics in 2020. She stressed that a step-by-step approach to coming back from an injury is extremely beneficial for athletes like Shiffrin.
“It’s okay to recognize that fear is okay and it’s a totally normal thing and it’s just a matter of being able to tell yourself, do I need to be this afraid of what I’m facing? So, fear is okay. Is my fear in line with what I’ve gone through, and in her situation the answer is yes. So then it’s just understanding where that fear comes from and how to overcome it,” Dr. Kimball said.
Shiffrin did compete in the slalom event in Austria in early February, but the speeds in that race were lower than the giant slalom event. She and her teammate, Breezy Johnson, took gold in the new team combined event.
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