Debate on dangerous ski training courses flares at start of Olympic season, five months ahead of the Milan Cortina Games.
When Mikaela Shiffrin started skiing again weeks after her terrifying crash last year, the American star was even more alert to the potential dangers of training courses.
Shiffrin’s injuries – a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe damage to her abdominal muscles – came in a World Cup giant slalom race. But the two-time Olympic champion knew that training could be just as risky.
If not more.
“When I came back from injury, I was aware of the fencing on the side and a hole in the course and where the trees were,” Shiffrin said in a recent interview.
“We are often training in conditions where the variables are just too many to control and you have to decide sometimes: Is this unreasonably dangerous, or is this within a reasonable level of danger that we need to train, we need to practice, and this is the only way we can do it?”
French skier Alexis Pinturault had similar experiences.
“We are training in many places where it’s not really safe, yes, that’s 100 percent sure,” th
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