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VERMONT’S OLYMPIC HOPEFULS

Soon, a large contingent of Vermont skiers and riders will be Beijing-bound for the 2022 Olympics. Here are the athletes we are watching. By Angelo Lynn

“Ryan Air prepares for takeoff” is how Vermonter Ryan Cochran-Siegle captioned this shot of himself speed training at Copper Mountain last fall.

Tune in to watch the 2022 Olympics in Beijing this February and you’re likely to see a number of Vermont-trained athletes. Sure, there will be the expected standouts —Ryan Cochran-Siegle of Burlington, Jessie Diggins of Stratton, Susan Dunklee of St. Johnsbury. But you may also see some new faces and surprises, such as aerialist Megan Nick of Shelburne, freeskier Mac Forehand of Winhall, or three members of the Vermont National Guard, all competing in biathlon.

While many still have to officially qualify, here’s who we are watching. To see the Games live, tune in to NBC’s streaming services. For a list of events and their live broadcast times, see Calendar, p. 60.

ALPINE RACING

While most of the Northeast spent Thanksgiving weekend cheering as Mikaela Shiffrin finished first and Paula Moltzan finished 7th at the Homelight Killington World Cup, Vermonter Ryan Cochran-Siegle quietly climbed another rung on what has been a long, steep ladder to the top of the U.S. Men’s Ski Team.

On Nov. 27, Cochran-Siegle sped into 10th place in the World Cup downhill at Lake Louise, Canada, the top American to finish in the speed event. “It’s a good start, especially in a downhill for me,” said the 29-year-old whose mother, Barbara Ann Cochran, won a gold in slalom in the 1972 Olympics. “This is my best start of the season in downhill, but we all know we’re capable of more,” he added. A week later he was 6th at the downhill in Beaver Creek.

For much of his career, Cochran-Siegle has been fighting his way back from an injury. The former Junior World Champion destroyed his knee in 2013, sat out for a long time but then worked his way back.

At the end of the Covid-shortened 2020/21 season, Cochran-Siegle was ranked 10th in the World Cup standings for super G and 14th for downhill. Earlier in 2021, he became the first American man to win a World Cup super G in 14 years. In January 2021, he had the best time in the training run for the famed Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbuhel, Austria. In the actual race, he crashed hard and was airlifted out with a season-ending fractured vertebrae.

Last spring, RCS, as friends call him, was still wearing a neck-brace as he helped his cousin Tim Kelley boil sap at UnTapped’s sugarhouse at the base of Cochran’s Ski Area. “It’s the first time I’ve been here in the spring in a long time,” Cochran-Siegle said. But after rehab, he is back and switched to Head boots and skis. Cochran-Siegle may be the men’s alpine team’s best chance of earning a medal in Beijing.

On the women’s side, Burke Mountain Academy grad Mikaela Shiffrin, 26, is, of course, back and fresh off her fifth consecutive slalom win at Killington, her 46th overall, tying Ingemar Stenmark’s record for a single discipline. She too has been building back since taking time off after her father’s death and nursing a back injury. In early November, Shiffrin was at the U.S. Ski Team’s speed training camp at Copper Mountain, Colo. In 2017 she surprised even herself by winning both a World Cup downhill and, later, a super G in Lake Louise.

In 2018 in PyeongChang, Shiffrin withdrew from the downhill and

super G after bad weather caused a change in schedule. She came away with a gold in giant slalom and a silver in the super combined. Those two medals tied her with Andrea Mead Lawrence and Ted Ligety in terms of the record number of Olympic medals won by an American alpine skier. This year gives her a chance to break that record.

Next to Shiffrin, University of Vermont’s Paula Moltzan, 26, (see our feature in the last issue, at vtskiandride.com) is now the second best American female in tech skiing and we expect to see her continue to rise in slalom and giant slalom. Since the start of the 2020/21 season, Moltzan has finished top 10 in the World Cup 8 times, with one podium and, in Killington, a 7th place. This year saw her take a break from her studies to focus on her skiing, but she and her fiancé are already house hunting in Vermont and she plans to finish her degree at UVM.

FREESKIING

Mount Snow native and former overall World Cup winner Devin Logan, 28, helped southern Vermont earn a reputation for turning out the top freeskiing talent in the world and she’s still on the U.S. Ski Team’s Halfpipe A team. Now, Logan’s former coach, Jesse Mallis, has turned out two Stratton Mountain School freeskiers to watch: Mac Forehand and Caroline Claire.

This magazine first wrote about Mac Forehand when he was just 13 and starting to win events near his family’s home in southern Vermont.Vt Ski+Ride 2021.qxp_Layout 1 1/20/21 2:04 PM Page 1

Mac Forehand’s family moved to Stratton so he could focus on skiing. It paid off. At 17, he won the overall Word Cup for big air.

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At 17, Forehand, then a Stratton Mountain School junior, made history by winning the overall World Cup for big air in 2019. In 2021 he placed fourth in the World Championships for big air in Aspen and so far this season has earned an 8th. Now 20, Forehand is also currently ranked 3rd in the world for slopestyle.

Manchester native Caroline Claire, 21, was just ahead of Forehand at Stratton Mountain School. She was a discretionary pick to go the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018 where she finished 23rd in slopestyle. She’s currently on the U.S. Freeskiing’s A Team but an ACL injury at last spring’s X Games, and then a tumble this past fall, have kept her from bringing her A game.

In moguls, Killington-trained Hannah Soar, 22, has been killing it. Growing up, Soar and her family drove from Connecticut to spend weekends at Killington bashing bumps on Bear Mountain before she enrolled in Killington Mountain School as a junior. During the height of the pandemic, Soar made Vermont home and part of her summer training was hiking as many as 18 peaks in one day. Soar skied consistently well in 2020/21, earned two World Cup podiums and was ranked third in the world.

Soar has been training with another KMS student and close friend, Alex Lewis, 22. Lewis joined the KMS Freestyle Program when he was seven. He’s currently on the U.S. Ski Team’s A Team but ranked fifth so may not earn a berth in Beijing.

Hannah Soar perfected her winning mogul style bashing bumps at Killington’s Bear Mountain. In 2021, she ranked third in the world for mogul skiing.

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One Vermonter to watch closely in Beijing is Shelburne native Megan Nick, 25. In 2021, the former gymnast who competes in aerials captured her first World Cup win. Two weeks later, she repeated her winning full double full and won another World Cup in Belarus. The first time Nick tried aerials, she was a student at Champlain Valley Union High School and doing gymnastics at Green Mountain Training Center in Williston. As part of a senior project, she began researching freestyle skiing and went to a training camp in Lake Placid, N.Y. Soon, she was on the U.S. Ski Team. Since leaving CVU, Nick has gone on to earn a degree in economics from the University of Utah and is working on a master’s degree in environmental studies—all while training for the Olympics.

SNOWBOARDING

When she was 13, Jules Marino of Westport, Ct., got serious about snowboarding. She and her father started heading up to Stratton and she eventually enrolled in Stratton Mountain School. She made the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics where she placed 10th in big air and 11th in slopestyle. Since then, Marino, 24, hasn’t placed lower than 10th in any FIS event in the last two years. With a sponsorship from fashion line Prada, she’s going to be a figure to watch in Beijing.

At 36, Stratton Mountain School grad Lindsey Jacobellis has won five World Championships in snowboardcross, 31 World Cups 10 individual X Games, and a silver medal at the Torino Games in 2006 (where a method grab at the end cost her gold.) The one thing that’s eluded her is Olympic gold. This may be the year that the all-around athlete (who also skateboards and surfs near her home in southern California) may get her chance. With two podiums in the 2020/21 World Cup, she’s going into the season ranked 7th in the world.

Growing up in Roxbury, Ct., Jacobellis and her family would head to Stratton on weekends. That’s where she learned to ride and enrolled in Stratton Mountain School, where another snowboardcross teammate, Alex Diebold, 36, also trained. Diebold, a Manchester, Vt. native, won a bronze in Sochi. Last season, his best event was a 6th in the team event but he’s already been to China once this season (finishing 24th in a World Cup), and is expected to return.

Another former SMS student from Connecticut who transferred to Okemo Mountain School, Joey Okesson could be another name to add to the Olympians list – though it may not be in 2022. At 18, Okesson is in his first year on U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s snowboarding A Team. Though he finished 13th at the World Cup in Aspen last season and 11th in another World Cup halfpipe event in Laax, Switzerland, he has some stiff competition. To get to Beijing, the 5’6”, 145lb rider would have to outperform Olympic great Shaun White and a halfdozen other American riders who are ahead in the rankings. Can Okesson do it? If not in 2022, then 2026.

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In 2021, Stratton resident Jessie Diggins won the sport’s highest honor, the overall World Cup.

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING

In PyeongChang, Stratton resident Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall made history as the first U.S. Nordic skiers ever to win gold. Back then, the women’s Nordic A Team was piled high with Vermonters – Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, Sophie Caldwell, Ida Sargent, Liz Stephens among them.

While those folks have retired from racing, Diggins, 30, has only gotten better. In 2020/21 she set another record, becoming the first American to win the grueling series of races known as the Tour de Ski, then placed 4th in the World Championships and earned the giant crystal globe as the season’s overall World Cup winner, also winning the distance title. Diggins has already started off the 2022 season strong with a silver in the Lillehammer, Norway, World Cup sprint.

Diggins has a new round of A Team skiers (many from Alaska) to push her. There’s also Katherine Ogden, 24, and her brother Ben Ogden, 21, from nearby Landgrove, Vt. While neither are likely to make it to Beijing, both are on the U.S. Team and improving.

BIATHLON

Here’s an impressive statistic: Seven of the 8 members of the 2021/22 U.S. Biathlon World Cup team live and train in Vermont. Even more impressive? Three are soldiers with the Vermont Army

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For biathlon superstar Susan Dunklee, this will be her last Olympics.

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Leif Nordgren, 32, of Hinesburg, Vt., Sean Doherty, 26, (originally from Center Conway, N.H.) and Deedra Irwin, 29, (formerly of Pulaski, Wisc.) are all based at the Vermont National Guard’s Camp Ethan Allen, which has one of the oldest biathlon training sites in the U.S.

Nordgren already has two Olympics to his name, with his best finish a 6th in the relay in PyeongChang. He shared that with Doherty, also a two-time Olympian. For Deedra Irwin, this would be her first Olympics: in 2021 her top World Cup finish was 38th in a sprint.

Vermont native Susan Dunklee, 35, and Clare Egan, 34, have both already qualified for the Olympics by earning multiple top-12 World Cup or World Championship finishes last season.

For Dunklee, the most successful U.S. biathlete ever, this will be her third (and final, she says) Olympics. Her best Olympic finish so far is 11th but she has earned World Championship silver medals twice. Dunklee grew up in St. Johnsbury and graduated from Dartmouth.

Dunklee has been training at Craftsbury Outdoor Center with her Craftsbury Green Racing Project teammate, Clare Egan, originally from Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Egan, who has a master’s degree in linguistics and speaks five languages, also raced in the 2018 Olympics. The eight member of the team and a member of the Green Racing Project that trains at Craftsbury is Jake Brown, 29, of St. Paul, Minn.

We will be cheering for all of them. n