Skier Muir hopes to 'come back even stronger'

Winter Olympic freestyle skier Kirsty Muir believes she "can come back even stronger" following her "crazy difficult" recovery from a knee injury, which has sidelined her for almost a year.

The 20-year-old Scot ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament and sustained meniscus damage after crashing during an event in December 2023.

After having surgery for that in January and also going under the knife to repair a historic shoulder injury in March, she was back on skis for the first time in early November during a return snow trip to Ruka in Finland.

"I was so excited I couldn’t even explain to you because it has been 11 months," Muir told BBC Scotland.

"I feel like I am definitely going in the right direction. Just being back on skis makes it really feel like it is real.

"It has been crazy difficult, I have never been off my skis for this length of time ever so it has been really weird, it has taken a lot and I have been very patient. It has just been really different but it has been a learning curve too, I am grateful for it but I am very excited to be back soon."

The Aberdonian was the youngest member of Team GB's squad for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing where she made the finals in both the women’s slopestyle and women’s big air events.

"I didn’t realise at the start of my journey how much of a hole I was in," she explained. "For the first three months of the rehab I was just like digging and keeping going but then I came out of that and I was like, 'wow, I was really quite sad'.

"So it is quite difficult mentally, just to keep seeing people on social media and online and watching the competitions you were supposed to be at. It is quite difficult but again that is one of the ways I have grown is just understanding that and realising that it wasn’t my time to be at that competition and then the next one I will be at.

"There are so many thoughts that go through your head, like, 'will I get back in general? Will I get back and have a weakness">