This wasn’t the way alpine skiing aficionados drew it up when they scheduled men’s and women’s speed races on the famed Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo., on back-to-back weekends this month.

They figured the events held major potential for a celebration of the sport’s golden couple: American Mikaela Shiffrin, who might be closing in on her record 100th World Cup win, and her fiancé, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, arguably the best speed skier in the world, both making the podium just a few miles from Shiffrin’s home down the road in Edwards.

That was Plan A. Not happening as Kilde announced in October he’d miss the entire World Cup season due to injuries sustained in a January crash.

On the bright side, Shiffrin is up on her feet and walking again after a crash of her own over Thanksgiving weekend in a World Cup giant slalom race in Vermont that left her banged and cut up and with a significant puncture wound in her abdomen. She is sidelined indefinitely, though she expects to be back before too long. Last weekend, she shot a video while walking carefully outside her home.

“I got my trusty little wound vacuum, we got it put in yesterday,” she said, showing off the gadget that can accelerate healing by decreasing air pressure over a wound, pulling out fluid and dead tissue and reducing swelling. “This is where I’m at,” she added with a look of reluctant acceptance as she stepped gingerly on an icy mountain street.

An update from Mikaela Shiffrin about her injury from the Killington World Cup race. pic.twitter.com/jTUIqyeZ12

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) December 7, 2024

Shiffrin’s latest injury also killed Plan B, which was for Kilde, who has spent nearly a year recovering from the major crash 11 months ago in Switzerland, to help coach Shiffrin this weekend on Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey track — where he won three years ago and where she had never competed. Instead, he’s been coaching her in the art of patience and recovery.

Kilde has had to become an expert in that, unfortunately. The January crash wrecked his left shoulder, ripping muscles from the joint. It also left a deep gash in his right calf, courtesy of one of his skis. Then, in July, out of nowhere, an infection raged through his surgically repaired shoulder. He was on the edge of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection, damaging the body’s tissues and organs.

His heart racing, his shoulder swelling, his fever spiking, he went to the emergency room during a visit with Shiffrin in Colorado. Doctors took one look at him and told him he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

There are few sports that test an athlete’s ability to manage injuries the way alpine skiing does. It has basically a 100 percent injury rate. So many of its top performers have missed full seasons or more to recover from ghastly bone breaks, torn ligaments, ruptured joints, concussions and everything else that can happen during high-speed crashes on ice while clamped into long, sharp-edged carbon boards. Skiers are good at doing the thumbs-up Instagram post from their hospital bed, but recovery and rehabilitation is anything but a happy process.

Shiffrin, 29, has been pretty lucky so far during her storied career, though last season she missed six weeks while recovering from damage to her knee ligaments that she suffered during a downhill race on the Olympia delle Tofane course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where the 2026 women’s Olympic competition will take place. She returned in time to capture another season slalom title, but the experience taxed her brain as much as her body.

“When you’re injured, whether it’s for nine months or eight weeks, you’re watching the world carry on without you being in a space where you are supposed to be, and that’s frustrating,” she said during an interview this fall before the start of the season. “There are so many moments of doubt when you feel pain or weakness, when it’s like, ‘I don’t know that I can do that.’”

That’s basically been Kilde’s life since his January crash.

The damage to both his shoulder and his leg left him wheelchair-bound for weeks, since he couldn’t use crutches. Kilde has been called “the Arnold Schwarzenegger of skiing” for his strength. His being too weak to get out of a wheelchair is a difficult image to conjure.

The gash in his calf severed nerves. For months, he could not make his foot and toes move the way he wanted them to. Sometimes his toes would just hang like appendages. Only in late spring did he begin to think that his foot would eventually work properly again, though he still hasn’t regained much feeling in the toes.

For months he felt like he had no purpose in his life.

“You lose your job and you’re injured, you can’t even do anything,” he said. “I can’t work on my shoulder which needed to be worked on. I can’t work on my leg which needed to be worked on. I can’t even be in the sun because of antibiotics. I had to be indoors. Just a really, really boring life, honestly.”

A few weeks in, he realized he needed to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, especially since this recovery was going to take a while. So he looked into finding some way to stimulate his mind.

Kilde may be a two-time Olympic medalist with 48 World Cup podiums, but by some measures he is the black sheep of his very educated family. His father is an engineer. His mother is a nurse. His brother is a finance executive. He has a high school education, and for the last couple of years, he has largely focused on being outdoors and his athletic career. It had been a long time since he had to study. And even longer since he was interested in studying.

Aleksander Kilde gets evacuated by helicopter after a crash at a World Cup event in Wengen, Switzerland, in January. He’s still recovering. (Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty Images)

He does have an interest in real estate, though. So he signed up for an eight-week online course in real estate and finance through the London School of Economics. There were a series of modules to complete each week, plus assignments and tasks, a final project and a certificate at the end.

The course description said the work would take up roughly 10 hours each week. He said it took him at least 20. He hadn’t worked with mathematical formulas in 15 years.

He said he learned plenty about his investments, but more than that, he learned something about himself.

“Reading and learning is really something that can give you a lot of energy,” he said. “I never thought of it like that before. I felt like I didn’t need it. But I think now, just always strive to learn. It’s really something that is good for you. Not only for your mental capacity but also for your mental health. It’s very nice to know things.”

It will be nice to ski again, too. He’s been cleared to get back on snow, but just for free skiing. He can’t go fast. He can’t crash. He needs another operation on his shoulder since doctors had to remove a lot of the work that had been done when they were trying to rid his body of the infection.

The next surgery will be the one that will make a comeback possible. For now, he can basically live a normal life. He just can’t ski race. To set himself up for that, he’s been paying close attention to his diet, cutting out alcohol and most sugar, making sure to eat quality meats and other proteins, biding his time for the opportunity to be able to do the thing that he has dedicated most of his life to. And if he needs his speed rush, he’s got a nice Audi that can go from zero to 60 pretty fast.

“And that’s fine,” he said.

His fiancée still has to work on her patience as she manages through her latest injury. She can be a little less zen than him at times, especially when she is on the sidelines, waiting to be healthy enough to get back into the starting hut at the top of the hill.

Then again, this one’s a little different.

“I’ve been impaled,” she announced in a video she posted on social media days after her crash.

You don’t get to say that every day. Not even when you’re an alpine skier.

GO DEEPER

Lindsey Vonn, at 40, returns to competitive skiing, earns World Cup eligibility

(Top photo of Aleksander Kilde and Mikaela Shiffrin: Alain Grosclaude / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)

The last fight for Jake Paul was a global phenomenon.

An estimated 108-million live viewers in around 65 million households worldwide tuned in to Netflix last month to see the influencer-turned-boxer defeat legendary fighter Mike Tyson in a unanimous decision, making it the most-streamed sporting event.

Paul, 27, and Tyson, 58, reportedly made tens of millions of dollars from the event in Texas.

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that everybody wants to be the next person to face Paul (11-1, 7 KOs).

“It’s boxers, it’s athletes, it’s celebrities — pretty much everyone in the world wants to challenge Jake Paul at this point in time, which is pretty remarkable just four years into his career and 12 fights as a professional,” said Nakisa Bidarian, who co-founded and runs Most Valuable Promotions with Paul.

So who will it be? And which platform will get to air the next fight that may attract millions of more eyeballs? Bidarian couldn’t say — not because it’s a closely guarded secret, but because those decisions have yet to be made.

“We’re definitely still looking at what the options are,” Bidarian said. “It starts with getting to an alignment with MVP, Jake and the rest of the company on where we’re going to put our product going forward. We obviously have been very successful with DAZN, we’ve been very successful with Netflix, we’ve been successful on pretty much every platform that we’ve been on.

“And now we’re at a point in time where we want to have a long-term media rights partner. Part of that would include Jake Paul, part of that would include Amanda Serrano and the rest of the MVP roster that we’re building. And then once we have that, we can then determine what’s the next appropriate step for Jake based on his career path, ambitions and aspirations.”

Bidarian offered some insight into those decisions, a time frame for when Paul’s next fight will take place, the massive success of the Tyson fight and more during a phone interview Thursday.

(The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity)

What is the thought process in determining Paul’s next opponent?

It’s a very unique set of circumstances. We’re at a point in the sport of boxing where there is definitely a transition from the old guard to the new guard. Whether it’s Tyson Fury and [Oleksandr] Usyk, who are fighting in a couple of weeks, whether it’s Anthony Joshua or whether it’s Canelo [Álvarez] — any big name in the sport you can think of, they’re all getting to a point where their prime may be fading. When you look at the next generation, there’s really three names in the U.S. from my perspective. One, by a longshot, being Jake, that no one comes close to. And then there’s two other guys who’ve called out Jake — [Gervonta] “Tank” Davis and Ryan Garcia.

Jake’s never been in a more fortunate position in terms of demand, and when I say demand I mean in terms of distribution partners that want to work with him and MVP and also in terms of fighters that want to share the ring with him because they understand the kind of box office and attention that he drives.

Jake has two paths that he’s focused on. The most important path to him is to become a world champion. … He’s going to continue on the path to grow as a boxer, increasing the level of competition to then get to the point where he can challenge for a championship. And then he’s also going to look to do these disruptive, big events which … are still gonna be very competitive. Very, very competitive.

Is there any particular opponent that might pique his interest over the other possibilities?

I think we’re just evaluating. Part of when you have so much success is, you know, the biggest names are calling him out, but everyone has an expectation that is I’m gonna make tens of millions of dollars to fight Jake Paul. And we pay people very well and we want to be in a business that is profitable for all parties, but we’re not gonna do things that don’t make economic sense. So part of the process is understanding what opponents are realistic.

Is there a timetable in mind for Jake’s next fight?

We’re holding dates in different cities starting in mid-April all the way through mid-July, so giving ourselves the flexibility to have him return anywhere from April to July.

Were you expecting the Tyson fight to generate as much interest as it did?

I think what surprised us was how the entire world was interacting with this event. Seventy-eight countries on Netflix, it’s the No. 1 piece of content. There’s no piece of content like that that exists. It just doesn’t happen. ‘Cause even the World Cup final, there’s two countries that are highly engaged and there’s a lot of countries that don’t care. The Olympics on any given day there’s different competitions and different teams and different rounds that pique and don’t pique interest. So we had something that — you know, Super Bowl, unbelievable viewership, but highly concentrated.

It was the first time — I heard this from multiple journalists — where journalists’ mothers, women who were in their 50s, 60s, 70s, were talking to the journalists’ children about a fight. That just doesn’t happen. So that was a very special combination when you connected to different audiences of these two guys and what it meant.

Did any of this even seem possible just a few years ago?

When we started MVP in August of 2021, we certainly had a vision of doing big, disruptive things. And if you look at Jake’s events, no matter how you slice ‘em, if you look at pure global interest, pure social media, they’re the biggest events outside of the Super Bowl. The amount of people who want to view and see what he’s up to is pretty phenomenal. And we do that with the right match making and bringing different audiences together. But did we think that we could within three years partner with the biggest media platform in the world and effectively break the internet? No.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League, hoping to educate players on the art of taking a hit, brought in a big name.

Ex-NHL player Ryan Getzlaf was one of his generation’s best combinations of skill and physicality. He was an elite playmaking center — who won a Stanley Cup and two Olympic gold medals — and a punishing 6-foot-3, 220-pound presence.

The former Anaheim Ducks captain now works in the NHL’s department of player safety, which hands out suspensions or fines for on-ice incidents in the league. It was in that capacity that he spoke to PWHL players during the league’s November preseason camps.

Since the launch of the PWHL in January, women’s hockey has become more physical than ever before. And while the increased contact has largely been celebrated — by both players and fans — there have been some concerns about injuries and ambiguity about how to interpret the PWHL’s rulebook. Getzlaf’s goal was to teach players how to better protect themselves on the ice.

“Through no fault of their own, a lot of them never played contact hockey before, so they’re learning a whole new set of rules and a whole new style of play,” Getzlaf told The Athletic. “(The league) saw the benefit for me to go in and talk about spacing on the ice, how to use your body properly along the boards (when) defending against contact, as opposed to putting yourself in some tough spots.”

Women’s hockey has been played the same way for decades. But now athletes are having to adjust to a new style of play once they hit the professional ranks. Navigating that change is going to take time for many players, league officials and executives.

“It’s unprecedented to have your first professional game be the first time you’re allowed to be physical,” said Toronto Sceptres coach Troy Ryan. “You’re going from 0 to 100.”

Physicality has been a hot topic in women’s hockey for years, especially among players.

In April 2023, The Athletic conducted an anonymous poll in which the majority of players said that if they could change one rule in women’s hockey, it would be to allow more contact.

According to the International Ice Hockey Federation rulebook, “bodychecking” in women’s hockey is allowed when there is a clear intent to play the puck. What that typically meant in practice, however, was players being penalized for making contact. That has made women’s hockey conspicuously different from the NHL, where hitting — and fighting — is very much a part of the game.

Women’s hockey players have long believed they should be able to get away with more contact, particularly at the net front and along the boards — not so much in open ice, where hits get more dangerous.

Before the PWHL launched, league leaders were deciding what PWHL games should look like; making the games more physical was an easy change.

“The players want this,” said Jayna Hefford, the PWHL’s senior vice president of hockey operations, who played 17 years for the Canadian women’s national team. “We think it’s a great brand of hockey. (The players) are strong, they’re fast, they can play this way.”

The PWHL’s initial rules around bodychecking were written similar to the IIHF’s — where gaining possession of the puck was a requirement to make contact — but it was clear early on that the interpretation of the rules and the way games were officiated was going to be different. There were more hits on the boards, and more contact was allowed in puck battles.

There were injuries last season, but according to Hefford, the number of injuries did not hit an alarming level. If at any point the increased physicality was creating more injuries, the league’s chief medical officer, Tina Atkinson, was instructed to flag her concerns with hockey operations. Over a number of check-ins, Hefford said that was never the case.

But there was inconsistency in how games were called last season. And for many players, the increase in contact was a first in their career.

Some players grew up playing boys hockey, where bodychecking is introduced at the under-14 level. Those players would have learned how to absorb contact, or how to throw a good hit — albeit years ago, especially for veteran players. Bodychecking has never been permitted in youth girls hockey, which means those skills are not typically taught.

“We’re figuring it out as players,” said Toronto defender Renata Fast. “There’s going to be bad hits because players are learning how to play physically. Not only are you learning how to take a hit, you’re learning how to give it and there’s going to be instances of doing it at the wrong time.

“I think for our league it’s been a work in progress.”

Defenders like the Sceptres’ Renata Fast can now add physicality to their arsenal, but it’s a learning process. (Troy Parla / Getty Images)

That work has taken on a few different forms.

Before the start of the 2024-25 season, the PWHL announced several rule clarifications regarding bodychecking.

The rulebook now more clearly states that bodychecking is permitted when players are moving in the same direction and that hitting an opponent straight on — with “opposite-directional force” — is prohibited. The league also introduced strict guidelines around head contact; any illegal checks to the head will result in a major penalty and a game misconduct, pending a video review.

Hefford said the league sent out multiple educational videos to officials, players and team staff on things like boarding (which many around the league found to be inconsistently penalized last season), hits to the head and bodychecking, with examples on what is permitted and what should be penalized heading into the season.

“We’re all adapting to this new standard,” said Hefford. “After season one, we felt the need to really try to clarify where those lines are.”

Getzlaf was brought in to help players better protect themselves on the ice for the times when an opponent might cross those very lines the league is trying to make less blurred. He hosted two short video sessions in Toronto and Montreal, where the league’s six teams were split up for preseason.

The main areas of concern Getzlaf identified in clips was player awareness and positioning. With no contact in women’s hockey for so long, players were accustomed to turning their backs to opponents along the walls to protect the puck. Now, that could put a player in a vulnerable position.

“If somebody is coming to make a hit and you turn your back at the last second, you’re going into the boards head-first,” Getzlaf explained. “Those are certain things we have to get out of the game.”

Getzlaf also told players he’d like to see them stop either five feet from the boards, or right up against them.

“When you’re standing at three feet, you can go in pretty hard on your head,” he said. “If you get closer to the boards, your shoulders and the boards can absorb some of the hit and it allows you to be safer.”

The importance of being more aware of their surroundings on the ice — and where contact might be coming from — was perhaps the biggest takeaway for players.

“It was interesting to have someone with an outside perspective and I totally agree with it,” said Minnesota forward Taylor Heise. “In this league (players sometimes) get away with being complacently not aware of what’s going on. Whereas in the NHL, your life is at stake at that point. You’re not going to turn and not know where you’re going because you’re going to get your ass laid out.”

Player awareness on the ice was a big takeaway for the Minnesota Frost’s Taylor Heise. (Michael Chisholm / Getty Images)

Some teams had already taken the onus on themselves to help teach players how to safely get hit. The Ottawa Charge brought in former NHL defender Marc Methot to run a hitting clinic ahead of the inaugural season. Minnesota coach Ken Klee, who played 934 games in the NHL, instructed players himself.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Klee said. “I’m more concerned with can we absorb checks, can we get out of the way, can we protect ourselves, rather than us being the big bad (Philadelphia) Flyers.”

And while protecting yourself is important, Klee has also emphasized to players the lines that should not be crossed, particularly when it comes to dangerous boarding penalties, which are called when a player hits an opponent violently into the boards.

“If you see numbers (on the back of their jersey) you have to let up,” he said. “If you see numbers, you can’t go finish them and say it’s on her because she didn’t look.”

At a recent Toronto Sceptres practice, Ryan spent most of the skate working with players on angling while on the defensive side of the puck. Having a good angle, he said, is critical for proper defensive positioning, but it also allows for safer contact versus going straight at an opponent.

“I want physicality. I think it’s a big part of the game, but I don’t want it to be reckless,” he said.  “It’s our job to make as many adjustments as we can to get athletes ready for physical play – it’s no different than helping an athlete get ready for our power play or penalty kill.”

With more contact looming, many players took a different approach to training in the summer to prepare for the 2024-25 season.

Around 20 PWHL players spent the summer at Shield Athletics — a facility in Burlington, Ont., 35 miles from downtown Toronto — with a more holistic training plan that included rehab, mobility, strength training and on-ice sessions.

“Last year opened a lot of players’ and trainers’ eyes into all those little rehab exercises that needed to be implemented in our programming,” said Fast.

At Shield, players spent several weeks working on their mobility and any nagging injuries or weaknesses in their body before moving onto any heavy lifting.

“If you’re not dealing with these minor weaknesses, when there’s contact, all of a sudden they catch up to you and they catch up to you very fast,” said Shield founder Brandon Coccimiglio, who worked with the PWHL players.

In the gym, players focused on building strength more than they’d done in previous offseasons, especially in their upper body. On the ice, Coccimiglio ran drills that simulated the kind of in-game contact situations players are most likely to be in, like escaping pressure while carrying the puck or taking a hit and making a pass.

“When you build that confidence in that body with that athlete,” Coccimiglio said, “all of a sudden they’re going into the boards and it’s not even fazing them.”

Despite all the adjustments, there have already been controversial hits this season.

Fast was boarded hard in Toronto’s first game of the season. Sarah Fillier, the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft, was needlessly hit into New York’s open bench door in a game against Boston. Last week, Minnesota defender Maggie Flaherty was suspended for two games after what the league’s player safety committee called an “unsafe and dangerous” hit on Boston forward Alina Müller.

Flaherty was initially given a major penalty and game misconduct for an illegal hit to the head, which was downgraded to a minor after a video review. The officials believed Müller’s own stick hit her in the head, not Flaherty.

But the league still handed down a suspension for multiple infractions: a north-south hit with no intent to play the puck, an extended elbow and avoidable head contact.

“We just went over this with players,” said Hefford, who is on the player safety committee. “All of those things cannot be part of the game. And we wanted to make sure we didn’t allow any sort of gray area.”

The hope for many stakeholders in the women’s game is that some form of body contact is introduced at lower levels so players are more prepared as they move up the ranks and eventually get to professional hockey. Nobody wants dangerous bodychecks in girls youth hockey. Instead, the focus would be on teaching players how to use their body safely and how to defend against contact. That way, when they get to the PWHL, it’s a more seamless transition into contact hockey.

“I think it has to be addressed at younger ages,” said Coccimiglio, who said he’s been working with some youth female hockey players on controlled contact scenarios. “The game is getting more physical and they have to be prepared for that.”

While it’s still a work in progress, most players ultimately see this increased physicality as a good thing for the game.

“It allows for the game to be played at a higher level,” said Fast. “It brings more fan engagement. There’s a lot of benefits to it.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Chris Young / The Canadian Press via AP, Bailey Hillesheim  Icon Sportswire via Getty)