Shiffrin, fellow ski racers, clear mental hurdles after traumatic injury at own speed

From a physical standpoint, Mikaela Shiffrin is back to her winning form after a serious crash.

From a mental standpoint, there remains work to be done.

That's why Shiffrin sat out the giant slalom event Thursday at the world championships two days after taking gold in the team combined event in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria. The two-time Olympic champion revealed she's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a fall in a giant slalom race on Nov. 30 in Killington, Vt., where something punctured her side and caused severe trauma to her oblique muscles.

She's just not ready to tackle the GS. There's no concrete roadmap when it comes to getting over an emotional hurdle, or definitive timeline. Each ski racer processes a traumatic event — whether it results in a torn ACL, severe laceration, back injury or broken bone — at their own speed.

"Because when you go through a trauma event and that part of your brain gets shut down, it can't make sense of what happened. So your brain is left with this puzzle memory of, 'Whoa, what happened there?"' explained Ben Foodman, a psychotherapist and performance specialist who has no ties with Shiffrin but has worked with professional race car drivers, Major League Baseball players, Olympians, NFL players and PGA golfers to help them navigate mental health concerns.

"If you're not gentle and you're not going at a pace that they can tolerate, then sometimes what can happen is they can feel like they're right back in that experience," Foodman added.

Italian Olympic champion Sofia Goggia knows the feeling. She was returning from a serious knee injury and was gripped by anxiety as she trained on the glacier in Soelden, Austria, three months ago.

"I was full of fear," Goggia said.