AJ Ginnis is a former member of the US Ski Team, who after years of injury and near-misses on the World Cup, was cut loose from the US Team in 2018. He continued his racing at Dartmouth college while continuing to keep his finger in the World Cup as a non-named member of the US Team.  That is until this year when Ginnis decided to race under the flag of the country where he was raised – Greece. While it may be nothing new to find an American-raised skier or, former US Ski Team members, wind up racing for other nations, the 26-year-old Ginnis actually spent the first half of his life in Greece. That’s where his late Greek father taught him to ski. So, to answer the question you’re probably asking right now, yes, there is skiing in Greece, a fair amount.  While they don’t have much in the way of ski racing, his recent 11th place finish in Flachau, Austria, was celebrated through this Mediterranean national in a way his bronze medal at the World Junior Championships in 2015 never was nor ever will be. Racing Greek has been the experience of a lifetime for AJ Ginnis, and his lifetime of experiences has been nothing short of an Odyssey.  

In the last 25 years, I’ve been covering ski racing, I find myself asking this every year: Does it seem there are more injuries than usual? But this year, injury reports are so frequent that my list has more than 50 World Cup names on it. While that’s still lower than the annual average, we’re barely halfway through the year.  What’s more is that many of the very best skiers are getting injured. The implication seems to be that there might be no immunity, certainly when you consider the injury of last year’s Overall winner, Alexander Aamodt Kilde. Regarded by many as maybe the strongest, fittest athlete to ever have ski raced, Kilde tore his ACL mid-January, in what looked like an innocuous fall. Other World Cup winners or podium skiers that have been injured between summer and now include Thomas Dressen, Joseph Ferstl, Brice Roger, Mauro Caviezel, Ryan Cochrane Siegle, Tommy Ford, Lucas Bratthen, Sofia Goggia, Nicole Schmidhoffer, Wendy Hoeldener, Bernadette Schild, Alice McKennis Duran, Jackie Wiles, Laurenne Ross, Nicole Delago, Anna Swenn-Larsson, Nina Ortlieb, Romed Baumann and of course Ted Ligety, whose career ended on injury.

There many more.

So, I turned to someone who might be able to put some of this into perspective. My guest, Troy Taylor, is the High-Performance Director for the US Ski Team. He’s been paying close attention to the injuries and has some eye-opening insights. Like the fact that half of all injuries happen in races despite the fact 90 percent of their time, at least, is spent training. Furthermore, those racing injuries happen where training rarely take them, in the final stretch of full-length race runs. Then, once injured, the likelihood of re-injury increases significantly, and that holds true for up to 2 years after the initial injury.

Our sport, as you might already have suspected, is about as dangerous as non-contact sports get, but maybe just by changing some of our habits, we might find some relief. Just listen …

Meet Chuck Ferries, the first and only American man to have won the slalom in Kitzbuehel, Austria, in its 90 years of existence. I say man because, as it turns out, women raced there too, and American’s Linda Meyers and Penny Pitou tied for the win in 1960. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know. Ferries didn’t either. So, when he declared he was the first American winner in 1962, it wasn’t long until he a Linda on the phone with some news.

Unless you know your ski history inside and out, this story is full of surprises like that. ... How you can run away from home in Michagan’s upper peninsula at age 16, by hopping a train for the Rockies to chase a dream to ski race. How you get a private training session with one of the greatest skiers of the time, Buddy Werner, then go on to beat him and the rest of the world the very next week. How companies like Head skis and K2 changed the industry, and how Ferries ended up running such revolutionary companies like K2, known not only for its innovation in fiberglass but for its outlandish marketing campaigns. He also ran Scott, which started out as just a pole company, but years later under Ferries’ watch was almost singularly responsible for introducing mountain biking to the European market.

Chuck Ferries, lives in my home town of Sun Valley. Or, rather, I live in his home town. Every time we meet, I learn something new about the sport of skiing. I think you will too.

Enjoy

Alice McKennis Duran was raised by her single father on a ranch along the Colorado River. She is a genuine American cowgirl and a badass. Her season ended in the fencing in Val d’Isere, France on Dec. 18.  While it’s a statistical inevitability that a 12-year downhill career like hers will pass through the OR, she has seen her surgeon in nine of those 12 years. I can’t think of a single skier who has suffered so many catastrophic injuries and after each, returned to the top of her sport.  We spoke on the eve of the race she won back in 2013 in St. Anton, about the highs and lows of life in the fast lane of downhill, and about whether her sport has become too dangerous. There is also the matter of her future: Will she continue and, come the day, would she pass her love of ski racing on to her kids?

The good, the bad, and the silver linings related to ski racing this year in the era of Covid. U.S. Ski and Snowboard Alpine Development Director Chip Knight helps lay out what it takes to pull off races this year, best practices and what the calendar might look like this year. No denying these are tough times, but might some of the practices required to navigate Covid-19 in 2021, become common practices down the road. Let’s not let a good pandemic go to waste. 

Most years I spend two days every week traveling cross country or overseas to cover the Alpine World Cup, World Championships, and Olympics for NBC. Because of Covid, my new commute is the 30 seconds it takes to get to the third bay of my garage, aka my broadcast booth and my waxroom.  So, I’ve got a bit more time on my hands to share with you all the stories I hear each week and have come across over my 40 plus years in the sport. It’s the fodder that never makes air, a chance to put on my reporter hat on, and an opportunity to share the conversations I have with characters and cognoscenti of the sport of skiing. Here’s a bit more of what I mean …