American ski star Mikaela Shiffrin is assuring supporters she’s “on the mend” after falling Saturday during a World Cup competition in Vermont, where an unknown object punctured her abdomen and sent the 29-year-old athlete to a local hospital, per NBC News.
Shiffrin was on the final run of a giant slalom event at the Stifel Killington Cup when she fell and crashed through two gates and into the surrounding safety netting. Had she won, it would have marked her 100th World Cup title, according to The New York Times.
Shiffrin calmly updated fans Monday on social media with footage of the accident and a lighthearted reference to Disney’s “Frozen.”
“Hey everybody, thank you so much for all of your support and love and, yeah — I was impaled,” she said in a video shared on X, formally called Twitter. “Almost just like Olaf … I literally have a puncture wound and some pretty significant muscular trauma around my whole right oblique area.”
Shiffrin first updated her fans Saturday in a video from the hospital to confirm there is “not really too much cause for concern” and spoke further about the accident with NBC Sports on Sunday.
“I have a stab wound, basically,” Shiffrin said. “We’re just not totally sure how I got punctured, but probably hitting the gate at some point, hitting the base of the gate. I basically have … a hole, like, sort of through my oblique.”
The skier, who had the fastest time of anyone during her first run at Saturday’s competition, confirmed in her social media post Monday that she’ll be recovering for “a few weeks minimum” before even considering getting back on the slopes.
Shiffrin has won 62 of the 99 World Cup slalom titles she’s competed in and won two gold medals and one silver at two past Winter Olympics, as well as seven golds, four silvers and three bronzes at various world championship events.
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Although sports are currently out of the question as Shiffrin’s recovery begins, women’s Alpine skiing at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy is fortunately more than a year away, giving her plenty of time to prepare and potentially add another notch to her Olympic belt.