A nervous, jittery Mikaela Shiffrin returned to racing Monday, two months after suffering the first knee injury of her career.
The questions:
Did she come back too early from tearing an MCL and suffering a bone fracture in a Dec. 12 warm-up crash, her first time tumbling into fencing?
Why ski at all this winter, with no real hope of capturing her fourth straight World Cup slalom season title?
This is her job, Shiffrin has stressed, and she can’t afford to take extra time off.
And when the 20-year-old from Colorado got back into the start gate in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Monday morning, she went back to work.