By Marleen Kaesebier
GDANSK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - After nearly two years away from competition following a brutal crash, several surgeries and many hours of rehab, Norway's Aleksander Aamodt Kilde has returned to racing just in time for next month's Milano Cortina Winter Games.
Kilde, who won a silver and a bronze at the 2022 Beijing Games, sustained serious injuries to his shoulder and leg, as well as a subsequent infection, after he crashed in Wengen, Switzerland in January 2024 during a downhill race.
The 33-year-old raced his first World Cup speed event since the crash in November at Copper Mountain, Colorado, in Super G and was warmly welcomed back by the skiing community, posing for pictures with world number one Marco Odermatt.
After 22 months away from racing, Kilde was understandably emotional after coming through the race unscathed.
That emotion was matched by his fiancée, American ski star Mikaela Shiffrin, who watched from the sidelines with her mother as Kilde pushed past the finish line after months of uncertainty.
"We've been a rock for each other,” Kilde, who has 21 World Cup victories, told Olympics.com in October. "We're always supporting each other."
Shiffrin, who had been by his side in the hospital after the crash and rushed to embrace him after the finish, said she could not believe what was happening when she saw Kilde in the start gate.
"I'm so proud of him," she told Swiss public broadcaster SRF after the race.
While Kilde tied for 24th in the Super G race at Copper Mountain, the speed star managed to snatch 11th in his downhill return at Beaver Creek, Colorado in December.
In both 2021 and 2022, Kilde had won gold in the back-to-back downhill and Super G races of the Birds of Prey event. This time around he started but did not finish the second of the races, which was shortened due to poor weather conditions.
Norway has no shortage of elite Alpine skiers and it is unclear whether Kilde will get back to the Olympic stage in February.
"First, I have to make it there," he told the International Ski and Snowboard Federation in a podcast interview from December.
"We're not talking about medals, we're not talking about trying to win it.
"Right now it's all about me getting back into the game and that's number one priority."
The official Olympic qualification period ends on January 18 and there are still a few key World Cup races to be held, including those in Wengen, Switzerland and Kitzbühel, Austria.
The men's Alpine events at the Winter Games will take place on the Stelvio slope in Bormio, Italy, from February 7-16, with the downhill race kicking off the series on February 7.
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
