Horror accident Shiffrin worried about Kilde: "The fall changed my life"

Patrick Lämmle

13.8.2024

Mikaela Shiffrin gives Aleksander Aamodt Kilde her best smile.
Mikaela Shiffrin gives Aleksander Aamodt Kilde her best smile.
Picture: Keystone

On the sidelines of the Olympic Games, ski star Mikaela Shiffrin gives an interview in which she also talks about the fall of her fiancé, Odermatt competitor Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.

No time? blue News summarizes for you

  • At the Olympic Games in Paris, Mikaela Shiffrin was passionately cheering on the US stars.
  • The games inspired her in many ways.
  • In an interview on the sidelines of the Games, she also talks about the serious fall of Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, her fiancé.

Mikaela Shiffrin has already won two gold and one silver medal at the Olympic Games. In Paris, she experienced the Olympic Games as a spectator for the first time and was visibly thrilled. She kept her fingers crossed for her compatriots and posted diligently on social media.

"For me, the stories of these games were a perfect balance between vulnerability, self-confidence and resilience," she wrote in one of her posts. The experience in Paris reminded her once again that you move forward through both the greatest successes and the biggest disappointments. "For most of us competing at the Olympics, it's simply not a matter of life or death and it's not the end of the world whether you succeed or fail."

Last winter, Shiffrin also experienced the full range of emotions. While she was crowned the undisputed ski queen, her partner had a serious fall. Aleksander Aamodt Kilde's crash in Wengen shocked the entire ski scene.

She was asked about it in an interview with "Eurosport". "Aleks' fall changed my life. Especially as I've experienced so much in the last five years and had to visit too many people I love in hospital," says Shiffrin, who lost her beloved grandma Pauline in 2019 and her dad Jeff the following year.

"Seeing Aleks there, having so many questions after his accident and not knowing how he was doing was really scary. It was traumatic for him. But I couldn't let it get to me too much because I had to get back into race mode and be strong for the rest of the season - and then I crashed myself." Perhaps she needed that to take a deep breath. The challenge is to keep getting back up, says Shiffrin.