Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde Are Ski Racing’s Power Couple

Ask Mikaela Shiffrin how she and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, a Norwegian Alpine star, became ski racing’s power couple and she chuckles.

“It’s a very modern story,” Shiffrin, the two-time American Olympic gold medalist, said with a grin. “Millennial style.”

Facebook friends for several years, private messages, texts, Instagram. Finally, a first date in person was arranged. Then last winter, coronavirus outbreaks were proliferating on the World Cup ski racing circuit.

“I was so paranoid, I made him get a negative Covid test,” Shiffrin said, laughing as she sat in her Colorado home late last year. “Romantic, huh?”

They met for a walk but remained six feet apart — with masks on.

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

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

“I said, ‘You’re going to regret saying that,’” Shiffrin said. “But it spurred a conversation that hasn’t ended. And at some 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 race season ended last spring, Kilde accompanied the Shiffrin family — Mikaela’s mother, Eileen, who is also her daughter’s coach; her older brother, Taylor; and his future wife, Kristi — on a beach vacation to Maui. The couple went public with their relationship in early summer, followed by social media posts of the pair cycling across the Brooklyn Bridge while in New York for the ESPYs.

Shiffrin, who turns 27 next month, likes to spend most of her free time training close to her home in Colorado, and Kilde, 29, joined her, doing leg weight training against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.

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

“We make each other better and learn from each other as skiers,” Kilde said in December after winning two World Cup races in Beaver Creek, Colo. “But mostly, what matters is that I enjoy spending time with her. As I’ve said many times, basically it’s just a bonus that she’s a skier.”

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

“Mikaela had gotten to a point where she had just shut it all down,” Eileen Shiffrin said. “After Aleks, I felt Mikaela had something to wake up for. She had optimism, she laughed again. It was wonderful to see. She looked forward to what was coming next, and that included her skiing.”

When Shiffrin returned to on-snow practices, teammates and coaches on the United States ski team each saw the same…