Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. The powerful torque of ski racing

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Ask Mikaela Shiffrin how she and Norwegian alpine star Aleksander Aamodt Kilde became ski racing’s power couple and she laughs.

“It’s a very modern story,” Shiffrin, the two-time US Olympic gold medalist, said with a smile. “Millennium style.”

Facebook friends for several years, private messages, SMS, Instagram. Finally, a first face-to-face meeting was arranged. Then last winter, coronavirus outbreaks proliferated on the World Cup ski racing circuit.

“I was so paranoid that I gave her a negative Covid test,” Shiffrin said with a laugh as she sat in her Colorado home late last year. “Romantic, huh? »

They met for a walk but stayed six feet apart – wearing masks.

“I thought: This is a really awful way to start anything,” Shiffrin added. “But he was good with it; he was super cool. And you know, we had a great time.

Months earlier, Kilde, who is a multiple gold medal contender at the Beijing Olympics this month, had reached out from a distance in a more touching way. Aware that Shiffrin was still dealing with her grief over the accidental death in 2020 of her father, Jeff Shiffrin, Kilde sent a note offering to listen in if she wanted to talk to someone.

“I said, ‘You’re going to regret saying that,'” Shiffrin said. “But it sparked a conversation that is not over. And at one point I said, ‘You know, you’re my boyfriend. We may have barely met, but you’re my boyfriend. And he was like, ‘Yeah, I am.’

When the racing season ended last spring, Kilde accompanied the Shiffrin family – Mikaela’s mother, Eileen, who is also her daughter’s coach; his older brother, Taylor; and his future wife, Kristi, on a beach vacation in Maui. The couple went public with their relationship earlier this summer, followed by social media posts of the couple crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York for the ESPYs.

Shiffrin, who turns 27 next month, likes to spend most of her free time working out near her home in Colorado, and Kilde, 29, has joined her, doing some leg weight training with backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.

“The guy can squat a house, it’s hard to keep up,” said Shiffrin, who retaliated with a unicycle challenge in a neighborhood cul-de-sac. (Shiffrin has been practicing balance on a unicycle since she was a child.)

“We make ourselves better and learn from each other as skiers,” Kilde said in December after winning two World Cup races in Beaver Creek, Colorado. “But above all, what matters is that I enjoy spending time with her. As I have said many times, it is simply an advantage that she is a skier.

Those closest to Shiffrin view her relationship with Kilde as a turning point in her recovery from her father’s death.

“Mikaela had gotten to a point where she just shut everything down,” Eileen Shiffrin said. “After Aleks, I felt Mikaela had something to wake up to. She had optimism, she still laughs. It was wonderful to see. She looked forward to what was to come, and that included her skiing.

When Shiffrin returned to on-snow training, her teammates and coaches on the United States Ski Team each saw the same thing: a light had returned to her eyes.

“Because Aleks has such a passion for skiing, it reminded me that I need to stop following the movements on the hill and rediscover my passion for skiing,” said Shiffrin, sitting at home under a wall that was posting just a few of his 22 World Cup season title Globes and World Championship medals. “Watching Aleks, I didn’t want to go through the motions anymore. I wanted to love skiing again.

Kilde has played down her role in the revival of Shiffrin, which puts her atop the overall World Cup standings this season. He instead noted that she helped him with his rehabilitation after surgery after tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament in January 2021.

“We each have experiences that are unique to ski racers,” Kilde said, “and we can share those and have conversations that you can’t really have with anyone else. But she inspires me, that’s all I’m saying.

Kilde will be the favorite in the men’s downhill and super-G in Beijing. Shiffrin hopes to compete in each of the five individual women’s alpine events and will be a one-in-four medal contender with a chance of winning multiple gold medals. She has won four times this season in slalom and giant slalom (with four second places) and twice third in super-G. Shiffrin will be the favorite in the women’s combined, which includes a downhill run and a slalom run. The event was not contested in the World Cup this season, but it plays to Shiffrin’s versatility as an accomplished speed skier and her unmatched record of 47 career World Cup slalom victories, the most large number of runners, men or women.

In a phone interview from Austria last month, Shiffrin said she and Kilde compared notes on the best way to peak for the Games. These conversations mainly focused on their mental preparations. Shiffrin has also been seeing a sports psychologist since last summer.

“It’s more about accepting the pressure that will be there rather than trying to run away from it or deny it,” she said.

Shiffrin acknowledges that she will be the American face of the Olympic Games.

“I much prefer that to going to the Olympics feeling like no one is counting on me because I skied very, very slow,” she said with a chuckle. In fact, Shiffrin could set records for most career alpine gold medals by an American or most alpine Olympic medals for a woman.

The 2021-22 racing season began for Shiffrin in October with a victory in Solden, Austria. On arrival, after waving to a cheering crowd, she appeared surprised when she spotted Kilde behind a waist-high fence. Beaming, Shiffrin rushed over for a hug and a kiss.

The two have not seen each other regularly since. The men’s and women’s World Cup racing circuits do not intersect as they are hopscotch across Europe and Scandinavia.

But on Monday, Shiffrin posted a photo on her social media accounts of her and Kilde inside the Olympic Village in Beijing.

“Reunited,” Shiffrin wrote above the photo, which shows Kilde with his left arm outstretched and his left finger bent down so it barely touches Shiffrin’s right arm under a jacket and shirt with long sleeves.

A very modern story.

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