Mikaela Shiffrin was on the brink of alpine skiing history, chasing down her elusive 100th victory with the home crowd in Killington, Vermont, ready to celebrate. But as Shiffrin herself often reminds us, there’s no such thing as guaranteed wins when you’re hurtling down the mountain at breakneck speed. Just when it seemed like the record books were about to be rewritten, disaster struck mid-run.

Leading the giant slalom with the fastest time, Shiffrin hit an abrupt snag that sent one of her skis flying and her crashing violently into the safety netting. The crowd’s cheers turned to gasps as the alpine icon lay stunned, unable to move for a moment. The medical team rushed in as Shiffrin, clearly shaken, processed the brutal impact. It was a heart-stopping scene in what should’ve been a historic moment. Hours after the incident, both Mikaela Shiffrin and her fiancé Aleksander Aamodt Kilde broke their silence.

Mikaela Shiffrin and her future husband Aleksander Aamodt Kilde share important updates

Mikaela Shiffrin gave her fans quite a scare after a gnarly crash during her second run of the World Cup giant slalom in Killington, Vermont. While the good news is that her ligaments, bones, and internal organs are fine, she wasn’t so lucky with her muscles—or her skin. Shiffrin suffered severe muscle trauma and a puncture wound to the right side of her abdomen, according to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team.

The team shared that despite no major structural damage, Shiffrin’s injury still left her unable to move, which she confirmed in a hospital update. She had been transferred to Rutland Regional Medical Center for a full check-up, where she reassured fans that it wasn’t as bad as it looked—but that abrasion was no joke.

“Not really too much cause for concern at this point, I just can’t move,” she said in a video from her hospital bed, even showing a doctor tending to the injury. “I have a pretty good abrasion. So I just can’t move. I’m so sorry to scare everybody. It looks like all scans so far are clear. Thank you for the support and concern. And congratulations to the winners and my team.”

While Mikaela Shiffrin was busy apologizing to fans and congratulating the winners from her hospital bed, her fiancé, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, was all heart on Instagram. Sharing her video update to his Stories, Kilde showed his unwavering support with a sweet caption: “❤️My hero❤️.” Talk about relationship goals.

This crash might be one of the tougher moments in modern alpine skiing, but Shiffrin’s 100th career victory isn’t out of reach—it’s just on pause. And to make things even more relatable, Kilde himself is currently recovering from a gnarly injury.

Aleksander Kilde misses the 2024-25 season due to a horrific injury

Mikaela Shiffrin and her family seem to be going through a rough phase at the moment. With her 100th victory looking like a waste of time, the unthinkable happened. And while Shiffrin will be counting the days until she can get back to skiing, her fiance too suffered a similar kind of fate. Suffering a harrowing downhill race crash in January, the Norwegian skier reported a shoulder dislocation and a severe right leg laceration. 

Appearing for the initial surgeries in January, Kilde had the procedure to fix two torn ligaments. Unfortunately, while he did come back to skiing in July, the Norwegian got an infection on his shoulder. In October, he shared in a video, “The issue here is that the infection was so aggressive and was there in my shoulder for a long time, so it was eating on my bone, and that meaning that all the hardware and everything that was in my shoulder need to go out.”

He continued, “So two of the muscles is still not attached at this moment, which means I need to do another surgery and reconstruct everything again.” Now, with more surgeries coming his way, Kilde is set to miss the entirety of the 2024-25 season. Adding more woes to his injury, Shiffrin too, is out of the skiing scenario for a significant time now. With things looking a little haywire, we wish both the athletes a speedy recovery.