This wasn’t the way downhill skiing enthusiasts planned this month’s men’s and women’s speed races at the famed Birds of Prey trail in Beaver Creek, Colorado, over consecutive weekends.
They thought the events offered great potential for a celebration of the sport’s golden couple: America’s Mikaela Shiffrin, approaching perhaps her 100th World Cup victory, and her fiancé, Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, arguably the best speed skier in the world world. world, both reaching the podium just a few miles from Shiffrin’s home down the road in Edwards.
That was plan A. It didn’t happen, as Kilde announced in October that he would miss the entire World Cup season due to injuries sustained in a crash in January.
On the plus side, Shiffrin is back on her feet and walking again after a fall of her own over Thanksgiving weekend during a World Cup giant slalom race in Vermont that left her beaten and cut up and with a significant stab wound to her abdomen. She is sidelined indefinitely, although she expects to be back soon. Last weekend, she captured a video as she walked carefully outside her home.
“I got my trusty little wound vacuum, we put it in yesterday,” she said, showing off the device that can speed healing by reducing air pressure over a wound, drawing out fluid and dead tissue and reducing swelling. reduce. “This is where I am,” she added with a look of reluctant acceptance as she stepped gingerly down an icy mountain street.
An update from Mikaela Shiffrin about her injury during the World Championship race in Killington. pic.twitter.com/jTUIqyeZ12
— NBC Olympic and Paralympic Games (@NBCOlympics) December 7, 2024
Shiffrin’s latest injury also killed Plan B, which was for Kilde, who has spent nearly a year recovering from the big crash 11 months ago in Switzerland, to help coach Shiffrin this weekend at Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey track – where he won three years ago and where she had never competed. Instead, he coaches her in the art of patience and recovery.
Unfortunately, Kilde had to become an expert in this. The January crash destroyed his left shoulder and tore muscles from the joint. It also caused a deep cut on his right calf, thanks to one of his skis. Then, in July, out of nowhere, an infection raged through his surgically repaired shoulder. He was on the brink of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection, damaging the body’s tissues and organs.
His heart was racing, his shoulder was swollen, his fever was rising, and he went to the emergency room while visiting Shiffrin, Colorado. The doctors took one look at him and told him he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
Few sports test an athlete’s ability to deal with injuries like alpine skiing. It basically has a 100 percent injury rate. Many of his top performers have missed entire seasons or more recovering from horrific broken bones, torn ligaments, torn joints, concussions and everything else that can happen during high-speed crashes on ice while wedged into long, sharp-edged carbon plates. Skiers are good at giving a thumbs up on Instagram from their hospital beds, but recovery and rehabilitation are anything but a happy process.
The 29-year-old Shiffrin has been quite lucky in her storied career so far, although she missed six weeks last season while recovering from damage to her knee ligaments suffered during a descent on the Olympia delle Tofane course in Cortina d’Ampezzo , Italy , where the 2026 Olympic women’s competition will take place. She returned in time to capture another seasonal slalom title, but the experience taxed both her brain and her body.
“When you get hurt, whether it’s nine months or eight weeks, you see the world going on without you being in a space where you’re supposed to be, and it’s frustrating,” she said during an interview this fall. the start of the season. “There are so many moments of doubt when you feel pain or weakness, and you think, ‘I don’t know if I can do that.’”
Mikaela Shiffrin was looking for her 100th victory at the World Championship event in Killington, Vermont, when she crashed and suffered an injury. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
That has essentially been Kilde’s life since his crash in January.
The damage to both his shoulder and leg left him wheelchair-bound for weeks as he could not use crutches. Kilde is also called ‘the Arnold Schwarzenegger of skiing’ because of his strength. Him being too weak to get out of a wheelchair is a difficult image to conjure up.
The cut in his calf severed the nerves. For months he couldn’t move his foot and toes the way he wanted. Sometimes his toes just hung like appendages. It wasn’t until late spring that he started to think his foot would eventually work properly again, although he still hasn’t regained much feeling in his toes.
For months he felt like he had no purpose in life.
“You lose your job and you get hurt, you can’t even do anything,” he said. “I can’t work on my shoulder, it needed to be worked on. I can’t work on my leg that needed work. I can’t even be in the sun because of the antibiotics. I had to be inside. Honestly just a very, very boring life.
A few weeks later, he realized he needed to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, especially since this recovery would take a while. So he looked for a way to stimulate his mind.
Kilde may be a two-time Olympic medalist with 48 World Cup podiums, but by some standards he is the black sheep of his highly educated family. His father is an engineer. His mother is a nurse. His brother is a financial director. He has a high school education and in recent years he has focused largely on the outdoors and his athletic career. It had been a long time since he had to study. And even longer since he was interested in studying.
Aleksander Kilde is evacuated by helicopter after a crash during a World Cup event in Wengen, Switzerland, in January. He is still recovering. (Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)
He is interested in real estate. So he enrolled in an eight-week online course in real estate and finance through the London School of Economics. Each week we had to complete a series of modules, plus assignments and tasks, a final project and a certificate at the end.
The course description stated that the work would take approximately 10 hours per week. He said he needed at least twenty. He had not worked with mathematical formulas in fifteen years.
He said he learned a lot about his investments, but most importantly something about himself.
“Reading and learning is really something that can give you a lot of energy,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it that way. I felt like I didn’t need it. But now I think: always try to learn from it. It’s really something that’s good for you. Not only for your mental abilities, but also for your mental health. It’s really nice to know things.”
It will also be nice to ski again. He can go back into the snow, but only for free skiing. He can’t go fast. He can’t crash. He needs further surgery on his shoulder because doctors had to take away much of the work done trying to rid his body of the infection.
The next operation will be the one that will allow a comeback. For now, he can basically live a normal life. He just can’t ski. To prepare for this, he has been paying close attention to his diet, cutting out alcohol and most sugar, making sure he eats quality meat and other proteins, and biding his time until he gets the chance to do what he imagines. has instructed. most of his life. And when he needs his speed, he has a nice Audi that can go from zero to 60 pretty quickly.
“And that’s fine,” he said.
His fiancée is still working on her patience as she gets over her latest injury. She can sometimes be a little less zen than he is, especially when she’s standing on the sidelines waiting to get healthy enough to go back to the starting hut at the top of the hill.
But again, this one is a little different.
“I’m impaled,” she announced in a video she posted to social media days after her crash.
You can’t say that every day. Not even if you are an alpine skier.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Aleksander Kilde and Mikaela Shiffrin: Alain Grosclaude / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)