Questions:

• What’s your go-to pre-race song or pump-up anthem — and what’s a song you’re embarrassed you love?

I don’t really listen to music before I race honestly, but if I do it’s gotta be to get more relaxed and not more pumped up. There’s enough nerves anyway at the top of a downhill so too much intensity is sometimes a bad thing for me. 

But I’ll go for any old 2000’s-era Taylor Swift if I’m on a road trip and want to sing along (alone). 

• Describe your travel vibe: are you the early bird, the napper, the playlist DJ, the snack hoarder, or the team prankster?

I’m the food guy – always planning where our next meal is gonna be as soon as we finish the last one. I’m lucky I’m an athlete since it gives me a good excuse to eat as much food as I can in the name of recovery.  

• What’s the most superstitious or weird thing you do before a race?

I do my best to not be superstitious and instead trust in all the work I’ve put in the get to this point. That said, I’ve worn the same socks racing for the last couple years so I’m a bit hypocritical there. 

• What’s your comfort food, secret hobby, or guilty pleasure when you finally get a day off?

My teammate Sam Morse and I are both super bad at sitting inside and chilling out on a rest day, so we’ve been looking for different activities we can do that don’t involve making our legs even more tired than they already are. So we’ve started rock climbing on our off days since the valleys in Europe are almost always dry in the winter, and we can go have a big adventure and feel like we did something cool with our day while still giving our ski-specific muscles a day off. 

• If skiing didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead — and how different (or similar) would that version of you be?

If skiing didn’t exist I think I would be in medical school right now. Or I guess on second thought I would be done with medical school and would be practicing as a doctor already. Crazy to think about considering I’m still partway through my undergrad at the moment. But this was always my goal as a kid, and I think in large part because I’m the same version of myself no matter what. I always need some ambitious goal to sort of center my life around and allow me to buckle down and work really hard. So although that purpose is skiing at the moment, I think it could just as easily be medicine or something else challenging intellectually. That’s what my parents tried to teach growing up. We don’t care what you’re excited about and we’ll support you no matter what; but the rule is you have to be excited and passionate about something. Can’t be nothing.