Norwegian skier Kilde says his leg ‘will never be 100%’ after crash but has sights set on Olympics

SÖLDEN, Austria (AP) — Still recovering from a horrifying downhill crash in January 2024, Norwegian skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde knows his body will never be the same again.

He hopes, though, it will heal well enough for him to win races again.

“The leg will never be 100 percent, no,” Kilde said on the eve of Sunday’s season opener of the men’s World Cup season.

“It is like crashing a car and taking it to the people who can fix it, it will never be the same car again,” he said. “But you can still make the car super fast.”

Kilde, the 2020 overall champion and winner of 21 World Cup races, is still some ways away from lining up at the start gate of a race and he adds to a long list of injured absentees for the traditional first giant slalom of the season on the Rettenbach glacier in the Austrian Alps.

Kilde underwent surgery for a severe cut and nerve damage in his right calf and two torn ligaments in his shoulder after crashing with the finish in sight at the classic Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen.

While “nerves take a long time to heal” in his leg, the shoulder has been causing him the most problems since. An infection prompted another surgery a year ago and forced him to sit out the entire 2024-25 season. Doctors ultimately took a strand of his hamstring muscle to fix his shoulder.

“The shoulder is limited in movement,” Kilde said. “When you ski, the move you do is always forward. And if you can’t lift your arms forwards, you are pretty much (done for).”

And then there’s the ongoing mental battle.

“I had tough days where I just wanted to rip my arm off. I was just like: ‘This is so ridiculous, I hate this,’” Kilde said. “There has been so much uncertainty. This uncertainty has really brought thoughts to my head that I’d never thought I was going to have: Retiring? Is it ever going to be OK? My shoulder, is it ever going to be able to lift anything again?”

Staying patient helped Kilde, as did leaning “on the support that I have,” which includes his fiancee, Mikaela Shiffrin. During Kilde’s recovery, Shiffrin had two crashes that kept her away from the slopes, too, though the American standout returned both times after nearly two months.

Kilde returned to skiing last summer and even joined the Norwegian team for their preparation camp in Chile, where he saw gradual improvements.

“It’s incredible how the body adapts, which is one of the reasons I see myself skiing again,” Kilde said. “Because I know I am capable of adapting.”

However, a small setback followed this week. Kilde knew he wasn’t ready to race Sunday, but he still tried to ski the race hill – one of the steepest and most challenging GS courses of the circuit.

“I was standing in the start, and my head wanted to do something, but I didn’t have enough training yet to do it, so I started but I could not really make it,” Kilde said. “So, that was tough mentally, but I believe that’s part of the journey.”

He hopes to start racing again at speed events in Colorado: first at a super-G in Copper Mountain on Nov. 27 — 22 months after his crash — then at a downhill in Beaver Creek a week later.

Ultimately, his eyes are set on the Milan-Cortina Winter Games in February, and on winning his first Olympic gold medal after taking bronze in the super-G and silver in the combined event in 2022.

“I feel like it’s Olympics where I start with blank pages. Hopefully I am a little bit like a dark horse, and I can just go in and hammer,” he said.

Kilde’s recovery process is part of a movie, “Downhill Skiers – Ain’t No Mountain Steep Enough”, which covers the 2024-25 downhill season and has been released this month.

Seeing the film made him feel like “being in a rollercoaster flight for two hours,” Kilde said.

“Wow, it’s kind of crazy,” he said. “I don’t want to be remembered as the guy that crashed. I want to be remembered for being the guy that crashed, came back and showed the world that he can do it.”

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Eric Willemsen on X: https://x.com/eWilmedia

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing