Mikaela Shiffrin may face obstacles, but she’s unstoppable!
The most decorated skier in World Cup history spoke with PEOPLE exclusively following yet another victorious season on Tuesday, April 1, opening up about the ups and downs she experienced on and off the slopes along the way.
Shiffrin, 30, earned her 101st World Cup win at the finals in Sun Valley, Idaho on March 27, an impressive feat in itself and a near-incomprehensible accomplishment after sustaining a life-threatening injury from a ski crash in November.
At the same time, Shiffrin’s fiancé, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, has been working back from a “brutal” crash in Switzerland in Jan. 2024. He underwent surgery and spent the last 15 months in rehabilitation, and hasn’t yet returned to the slopes since.
We both have been in survival mode for the last year and a half,” Shiffrin tells PEOPLE exclusively of both her and her fiancé in the wake of their respective accidents. “Total survival mode,” she emphasizes.
This season has been pretty hard in particular because of his injury, also because of mine,” Shiffrin explains. “The time that we’ve been able to spend together hasn’t been super high quality.”
Shiffrin’s injury at the Stifel Killington Cup in Vermont last November meant that she and Kilde were both at home for once, but because she “wasn’t moving,” they struggled to enjoy their time.
“I didn’t want to be touched. It was painful to do everything,” recalls Shiffrin, who needed surgery to treat a puncture wound in her abdomen after she hit a gate and was “stabbed” by a sharp object during the fall.
“It was like coughing, sneezing and laughing hurt,” Shiffrin says.
Now that she is back on two skis, Shiffrin praised Kilde’s mental strength in being able to cheer her on as she made history by winning her 100th World Cup, all while he’s still toiling away in rehab.
“I was able to return and [he] supported me in the return, understanding that my return to racing brought on its own challenges which are very different from the challenges he’s faced,” Shiffrin explains.
“He’s so good about being able to compartmentalize the road that he’s on, which is something I can’t even imagine how difficult it’s been,” she continues of her fiancé. “And to still be able to support me in my own road, it’s really incredible.”
Although the season has come to an end, the power couple already has their sights set on the 2026 Winter Olympics. Rest and recovery, though, is the name of their game in the months ahead.
Crossing our fingers that he is also able to get there and then all the stars align and all the work is done and pays off, so that we’re both able to compete,” Shiffrin, a three-time Olympic medalist, says. “I would be just so excited to watch him get back in the start gate of a race and then the Olympics.”
