"Freak of nature" Aleksander Aamodt Kilde as fit as New Zealand rugby players

Alpine skiing and rugby couldn’t be more different on paper, but Norwegian speed skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is the athlete that bridges the gap.

This is according to his childhood friend and national team conditioner Daniel Tangen.

The physical trainer analysed the New Zealand's rugby team - who are generally regarded as the most successful international side in history - as part of his studies at the Norwegian School of Sports Science.

Given Kilde’s impressive power to speed and fitness ratio, Tangen believes that his athlete would fit right in with the fearsome men of the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

"Kilde is a freak of nature," Tangen told the Myinfo Beijing 2022 website. "He dominates physical training. He's the perfect athlete.

"He is incredibly strong in every aspect. Also, his endurance and power and anaerobic power is beyond me."

“I read quite a bit about how the best rugby players in New Zealand train. There are some test results on physical capacity and those guys are some of the best-trained athletes in the world and he (Kilde) is right up there. He would fit right in with them."

Kilde: You need to have an 'extreme' body

"Well, [alpine skiing] it's a sport where you need quite everything, and then physique is just getting more and more important," Kilde said after the downhill's first training run on the Rock course at the Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Centre.

"It's also that equipment gets more and more extreme. So then you have to have a body that's also extreme.

"And also when it comes to injuries, it's easier to get back from injury and you also can stay away from injuries more. This way is going to make it better for you as an athlete, and you can do more races, a tighter program and also have more fun."

New Zealand adopts an holistic approach to the physical conditioning of its rugby stars. Not only do they aim to have the most anaerobically fit players in the world, but also those with the best reaction times, technical skill sets, and hand-to-eye coordination.

This may have been what inspired Tangen to tweak Kilde’s training regime in 2021/22.

"The last couple of years we have focused a lot on strength, then this year we changed a little to focus more on strength for motor control, to make the athletes more robust," the trainer continued.

"We had some sessions in Holmenkollen (the national ski jump arena in Oslo, Norway) on the stairs," They are really steep and quite long. We either run or jump single leg or double leg (up the stairs).

"Those sessions are probably the ones they look the least forward to.”

There is an old saying that nothing good ever comes easy, and so it proved with Kilde.

Under this rigorous new training plan, the 29-year-old approaches the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in red-hot form, having landed five World Cup speed victories this season. He currently sits atop of the downhill and super-G rankings.

Just like his girlfriend Mikaela Shiffrin, Kilde is considered one of the major gold medal threats when Olympic competition gets underway in Yanqing on 6 February.

MORE: Exclusive: Aleksander Aamodt Kilde on Mikaela Shiffrin “we make each other better”

When to watch Aleksander Aamodt Kilde compete at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022?

Aleksander Aamodt Kilde will be competing for medals in the men's downhill on Sunday 6 February at 11:00 Beijing time (19:00 PT on Saturday).

He will be at the start of the men's super-G on Tuesday 8 February at 11:00 local time (19:00 PT on Monday), and he will also race the men's giant slalom on Sunday 13 February (run 1 starts at 10:15, run 2 at 13:45 local time).