SUN VALLEY, Idaho (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin's flashbacks to her November crash in a giant slalom race are happening less and less when she's training.
For her, as she deals with post-traumatic stress disorder in the discipline, that's major progress.
While other racers compete in the GS on Tuesday at World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Shiffrin plans to squeeze in some training in the slalom. It will be the American standout's only event of the weeklong finals after not qualifying in giant slalom.
The two-time Olympic champion revealed last month that she’s suffering from PTSD after falling in the GS on Nov. 30 in Killington, Vermont. In the crash, something punctured Shiffrin's side and caused severe trauma to her oblique muscles.
Shiffrin skipped the giant slalom at world championships and has raced the discipline three times since, with her best showing 25th place.
But she's back to turning in fast sections at practice in the GS, a discipline that blends speed and technical skill.
“Training is going well. It’s actually super positive. Training has been improving day-by-day,” Shiffrin said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday before signing autographs for fans. “I'm just trying to get back to the confidence that I was skiing with in Killington when the crash happened. That would be a big goal.”
On that day, Shiffrin was leading after the first run of the GS as she charged after her 100th World Cup win. The finish line was in sight on her final run, when she lost an edge and slid into a gate, flipping head over skis.
The all-time winningest Alpine World Cup ski racer then slammed into another gate before coming to a stop in the protective fencing. She still doesn't know what led to the puncture wound.
To help with getting back in the giant slalom start gate, she's been working with a psychologist. Leading into world championships and the GS, she checked most of the boxes for PTSD symptoms. A few weeks later in Are, Sweden, she checked fewer.
“My processing speed and the mind-body connection has come back in a great way,” explained Shiffrin, who earned her 100th World Cup win last month in Italy. "But every now and then I’ll still have the sort of intrusive images or thoughts cross my mind of crashing or the pain. Normally, it’s in the start gate. If I’m starting to get a little bit tired in a session, I just imagine everything that could go wrong and it’s kind of an intense reaction.
“But it happens so much less often now. It does feel very true that simply exposure to doing the thing that’s pretty uncomfortable is helpful.”
Following her slalom training session Tuesday, Shiffrin will be watching as New Zealand’s Alice Robinson tries to hold off Italy’s Federica Brignone for the crystal globe in the giant slalom.
The 30-year-old Shiffrin can see glimpses of her GS form returning. She won an Olympic gold medal in the discipline at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games and 22 of her 100 World Cup victories have come in giant slalom.
“Some of my turns are competitive with the fastest in the world,” said Shiffrin, whose slalom race is Thursday. “But putting that together for a minute and 10-second GS run — that just takes time and repetition. We’ll need to try to get some days this summer with long course sets, with a lot of variation of course sets, variation of conditions. I don’t doubt that I can get to that competitive level again.
"I think a lot of my skiing is already there.”
AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin speaks to a reporter in advance of competing at the World Cup Finals, Monday, March 24, 2025, in Sun Valley, Idaho. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
