Kieffer Christianson tried on his first pair of skis when he was 18 months old. His mom was picking through sale items in a ski shop at the base of the local mountain, waiting for her older sons' races to start, when Christianson toddled over to the skis, set two little ones on the ground, and stood on them.
"Me ski," he said, looking up at his mom.
Today Christianson is 17, getting on towards six feet tall, and starting at Dartmouth College in the fall. He's also fast as hell. He has been nominated to the U.S. Ski Team's downhill squad, and once he's named to the team, he'll be the only Alaskan on it, and the first in a decade.
"With alpine it's pretty rare that we have Alaskans on the team," said Doug Haney, a U.S. Ski Team spokesperson.
It's common for Alaskans to fill slots on the U.S. Ski Team's cross-country squads. This year there were at least nine Alaskans among the 25 cross-country skiers named to the U.S. Ski Team's Cross Country National Training Group. It's rarer for Alaskans to be named to the downhill teams. Haney couldn't remember any Alaskans on the team during his time with the team, which stretches back four years. However, he did some searching and found that the Alaskan most recently named to the team was Andre Horton, who skied during the 2000-2001 season. Haney added that the most notable Alaskans on the U.S. alpine team have been Olympians Tommy Moe, Hillary Lindh and Megan Gerety.
Christianson, Alaska's latest nominee, grew up skiing at Alyeska, the Girdwood ski resort about 40 miles south of Anchorage. When he was two years old he started ski lessons, which his mom said she used for babysitting; he continued on to Mighty Mites, a ski racing program, when he was six.
He also grew up skiing behind his older brothers, who are about ten years older. "Kieffer grew up listening and breathing skiing because that's what his older brothers did," mom Pickering Christianson said. "He was trying to keep up."
Any recent high school graduate would envy Christianson's summer schedule. In a few days he'll leave Anchorage for a week skiing Oregon's Mount Hood. After that he'll head down to Park City, Utah, for a few weeks for training. And in August he'll fly to Chile with the Dartmouth ski team.
But it hasn't all been fresh powder and effortless turns. Getting to this point in his young career has also taken sacrifice. Before his first year of high school, Christianson was looking forward to taking classes with his friends and playing baseball, but going to public school would have cramped his training and racing schedule. He chose home school.
"It was hard when all my other friends were off at school and I was sitting at home alone, but once ski season started it was well worth it," Christianson said.
Over the next year Christianson will study at Dartmouth at about a halftime rate as he splits his time between class and skiing. He also wants to build on his strength in the slalom and develop his speed in the downhill. And, having been named to the U.S. Ski Team's D team, he naturally wants to get fast enough to move up to the C team (the A team is where stars like Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn do their thing).
"The D team is just a stepping stone, but it's definitely a good place to start," he said
Read the original story here.
No comments:
Post a Comment