Awful news out of Chile where Norwegian alpine ski racer Aleksander Aamodt Kilde has suffered another major injury after rupturing his Achilles tendon in a crash during downhill training on Wednesday.
The Norwegian Ski Team announced Thursday that Kilde is traveling home to Innsbruck, Austria, where he will undergo additional medical examinations and meet with his medical team to determine treatment options. The team said it will provide another update once more is known about the next steps in his recovery.
The injury is an especially difficult development for Kilde, who has spent much of the past several years working his way back from the devastating crash he suffered during the World Cup downhill in Wengen, Switzerland, in January 2024.
Kilde Has Already Endured A Long Road Back
That Wengen crash left Kilde with serious injuries to his leg and shoulder and eventually required multiple surgeries. Complications during his recovery included an infection, and he missed the entire 2024-25 World Cup season before returning to competition nearly 700 days after the crash.
Kilde made his World Cup comeback at Copper Mountain in November 2025 and showed flashes of his previous speed during the winter. His best result was an 11th-place finish in the Beaver Creek downhill in December.
His comeback season ultimately ended earlier than planned. Following a 42nd-place downhill finish at Crans-Montana on Feb. 1, Kilde announced that he would skip the 2026 Winter Olympics and shut down his season, saying his body and mind were not yet where they needed to be to compete at the level he expected. The plan was to use the additional time to rebuild ahead of the 2026-27 season.
Wednesday’s training crash in Chile now creates another significant obstacle, although the Norwegian team has not provided a recovery timeline or said how the ruptured Achilles could affect Kilde’s season. More information is expected after he is evaluated in Innsbruck.
Kilde, 34, remains one of the most accomplished speed skiers of his generation. He has 21 World Cup victories and 48 podium finishes, won the overall World Cup title in 2020 and captured downhill season titles in 2022 and 2023. He also won silver in the alpine combined and bronze in super-G at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
