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Steamboat Springs native Taylor Fletcher claimed a spot on his fourth Olympic team with a win in the Christmas Day Olympic Trials in Lake Placid. In his Ticket to Fly interview with Peter Graves, Fletcher speaks to the evolution he's experienced in nordic combined and the bright future he sees for future USA stars in the sport. It's an insightful look into the unique sport of nordic combined and Fletcher's own approach, how it has changed over the years and how he is approaching the Beijing Games.
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For the last few decades, few communities have produced more Olympians than Norwich, VT. In 1984, Jeff Hastings came within an eyelash of the first U.S. ski jumping Olympic medal since 1924. Today, Hastings continues to give back to the sport as a behind the scenes leader. His longtime commentary for NBC brought the sport to millions. Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves catches with Hastings on the eve of the 2021/22 Olympic season to look back at Sarajevo 1984 and to look ahead at the future of ski jumping in America.
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The ski jumping family vividly recalls that day in 2009 when Swiss Andreas Küttel became a world champion in Liberec. Growing up in the small Swiss village of Einsiedln, Küttel became captivated by ski jumping which took from from rolling hills in the midwestern USA to towering scaffolds in Japan. Host Peter Graves talks with the personable Küttel about his career and the impact ski jumping had on his life.
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Since she followed her brother off a ski jump at age six, world champion and Olympian Sarah Hendrickson's life has revolved around her passion for ski jumping. In this insightful interview with Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves, Hendrickson shares the highs and the lows of a career that put her at the pinnacle of the sport as she advocated for women's ski jumping, found success at the highest level and is now continuing to give back.
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Over the span of a decade, Johnny Spillane led the U.S. Nordic Combined Ski Team to its greatest heights with a World Championship title and three Olympic medals. Today, he reflects on his career from his boyhood home in Steamboat Springs with Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves.
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On National Girls and Women in Sport Day (Feb. 3, 2020), USA Nordic celebrates its own sport pioneers. In this episode of Ticket to Fly, host Peter Graves explores the pioneering efforts of nordic combined champion Tara Geraghty-Moats.
Skier Tara Geraghty-Moats is a modern-day pioneer! In the sport of nordic combined, which matches cross country skiing with ski jumping, she's the number one ranked woman in the world, blazing a pathway for her sport and female athletes. She talks to Ticket to Fly about her sport's upcoming World Championship debut and the push for Olympic inclusion in 2026.
Growing up in Vermont’s Upper Valley, a hotbed of Olympic talent, she tried her hand at many sports from freestyle skiing to biathlon to cross country skiing. But she saw an opportunity to make a difference in nordic combined, and has been the leader internationally in moving her sport from debut to Continental Cup to World Cup and now World Championships.
Geraghty-Moats has been living and training in Lillehammer, Norway this winter. It has been a season of lifetime achievement and day-to-day frustrations as COVID impacts the debut season of the FIS Nordic Combined World Cup for women. In an already small schedule, events in Lillehammer and Otepää, Estonia were canceled. Lillehammer was rescheduled but then canceled again after pandemic border closures in Norway.
In December, Geraghty-Moats won her sport’s World Cup debut at a rescheduled event in Ramsau, Austria. She now has her sights set on February 27 in Oberstdorf, Germany for the World Championships debut. And hopeful inclusion in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan-Corina, Italy is still on the horizon.
How did you find your love of sport growing up in Vermont?
I just love to do all sorts of sports, especially winter sports. I was a ski jumper from a very young age. I did biathlon starting at 17. I started cross country racing when I was eight. And I also did some freestyle competitions when I was quite young. I first saw some ski jumps at Oak Hill in Hanover, New Hampshire, right by Dartmouth College when I was cross country skiing with the local ski club. And I thought it looked like a pretty neat sport to try.After a tough all of training due to COVID, how did you approach the World Cup?
I was really, really proud with how I handled the World Cup. I had very, very low expectations going in and I just tried to focus on small technique aspects and do the level best I could with the training I had had. It was amazing. I don't think I've ever really got nervous for a competition. I think that partially it was the pressure of the fact that this was the first ever World Cup for women's nordic combined. I knew that whoever won that event would go down in history as the first ever winner of a women's nordic combined World Cup.How important has your training base in Lillehammer been for you?
You can definitely feel the Olympic legacy that the ‘94 games left and I'm training at all of those venues. The gym that I go to was actually at the opening ceremony venue. And also the legendary Birkebeiner Stadium was actually where I was just this morning doing intervals.How important is your team of USA Nordic athletes to you?
It's amazing having other team members who are women. And while they definitely come to me sometimes with questions or looking for some opinions, I like to think of myself more as a teammate to them and they’re teammates to me. They work just as hard as me. And I know that if they're given enough support in the coming years, they'll be medal contenders.Tune in to Ticket to Fly
What is Tara’s outlook on the future for women’s nordic combined? What advice does she have for young athletes? And how important it was for her to have home cooked meals from mom during her visits with Tara during her long stay in Europe this winter.Fans can tune in to Ticket to Fly to hear Peter Graves’ full interview with Tara Geraghty-Moats. It’s available on all major podcast platforms. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review for Ticket to Fly: The USA Nordic Podcast.
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Mike Holland is one of America's most successful ski jumpers. The two-time Olympian is the only U.S. athlete to win an event in the prestigious Four Hills Tournee with his 1989 victory in Bischofshofen, Austria. An engineer by trade, today Holland pursues his passion as a volunteer ski coach - honored in 2020 as U.S. Ski & Snowboard's Development Coach of the Year. Holland talks with Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves his passion for getting kids into sport and relives memories of that magical win in 1989. In an opening segment, Peter Graves and Tom Kelly update the 2020-21 Four Hills Tournee after three of the four events.
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Vierschanzen Tournee - the Four Hills Tournament - is ski jumping's biggest week. From towering ski jumps at Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, on to the legendary hills at Innsbruck and Bischofshofen, Austria, ski jumping's annual holiday tournament attracts the eyes of the sports world every year. Veteran media director Ingo Jensen takes us inside the legendary event with host Peter Graves.
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A new World Cup leader. Norway dominates. COVID makes an impact. And after a weekend in Niznhy Tigil, Russia, it's off to to the giant jump in Planica for Ski Flying World Championships. It's all on Ticket to Fly NEWS.
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Ticket to Fly News brings you the latest updates from the the Viessmann FIS Ski Jumping World Cup in Ruka, Finland. This week hosts Tom Kelly and Peter Graves speak with World Cup winners Markus Eisenbichler of Germany and Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud, as well as an exclusive interview with Eisenbichler on the eve of this weekend's World Cup in Nizhny Tigil, Russia.
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Ticket to Fly News brings you the latest updates from the the Viessmann FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, opening Nov. 20 in Wisla, Poland. This week hosts Tom Kelly and Peter Graves speak with Austrians Stefan Kraft and Daniel Huber, Germany's Markus Eisenbichler and Karl Geiger, as well as Poland's Kamil Stoch. Canadian Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes provides an exclusive look inside his top-10 finish and U.S. nordic broadcast commentator Chad Salmela provides a live update from the jumps in Ruka.
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In the 1990s, he was one of ski jumping’s greatest superstars. Fans packed stadiums from Bergisel to Bischofshofen to watch him fly. It was a dominant period for Austrian ski jumping, with Andi Goldberger winning three FIS World Cup season titles, two Four Hills crowns, 10 World Championship medals including two gold and a pair of Olympic medals.
Today, Goldi remains engaged in the sport as a fan and a television commentator. He recalls fondly those years when he was a fan favorite and the first ski jumper to break the 200 meter barrier sky flying.
In his fun-filled interview with Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves, he waxes nostalgic and also looks to the future. He also takes himself back to Bischofshofen, Austria in January, 1989 when he was there as a 16-year-old watching American Mike Holland soar to a victory in the Four Hills Tournament finale.
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Ticket to Fly News brings you the latest updates from the the Viessmann FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, opening Nov. 20 in Wisla, Poland. This week hosts Tom Kelly and Peter Grave speak with Austrian ski jumping superstar Andi Goldberger, USA Nordic ski jumper Casey Larson and new FIS Ski Jumping Director Sandro Pertile.
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BILLY DEMONG: From Medals to Sport Leader
In a career that spanned nearly two decades, Billy Demong won six Olympic and World Championship medals, including a stunning Olympic in 2010. Today, he’s at the helm of a rapidly growing national sports organization, USA Nordic, and a voice nationally for youth sport.
How did it all begin for the kid from Vermontville, N.Y.? What inspired him to success? And how does his past manifest itself in his vision for USA Nordic?
Peter Graves walked Demong through an insightful interview for Ticket to Fly, the USA Nordic podcast. The episode takes listeners from his early days in Lake Placid with future biathlon stars Lowell Bailey and Tim Burke, through his World Championship and Olympic success and to his role today as a pied piper for ski jumping and nordic combined.
Demong shares the blueprint for success that led a group of young boys from small communities around America to become one of the very best nordic combined teams in the world in the late ‘00s - winning World Championship and Olympic medals in a tiny sport traditionally dominated by Europeans.
Right from the opening question, this is an inspiring podcast that provides remarkable insight into the joy and exhilaration of sport. Here’s a teaser. But you’ll want to listen to this episode of Ticket to Fly, the USA Nordic podcast, from start to finish as Peter Graves talks with Olympic champion and USA Nordic Executive Director Bill Demong about everything from growing up in nordic combined to the future of youth sport.
CHATTING WITH OLYMPIC CHAMPION BILLY DEMONG
Bill, how DID a young boy from a small town in New York find nordic combined?
It's a great question and one that I like to reflect on a lot. In fact, I just had a conversation about it with some good friends of mine, Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey, who are both on the U.S. Biathlon Team and respectively had some of the best results in American history and their sport. We all grew up together in the Tri Lakes area of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake in upstate New York. The catalyst to getting us all involved was more or less a parent-built community program in Saranac Lake that was centered around Dewey Mountain. And it really started with five and six and seven year olds under the lights, the few lights that there were a Dewey Mountain, and learning how to love cross country skiing at the earliest age. And it was a it was a club that I think makes most people nostalgic, thinking about parents, a lot of little kids hanging out under the lights, drinking hot cocoa after traveling around Mid-Atlantic in the east and and doing the Bill Koch Youth Ski League.
Was there a catalyst to take it from hot cocoa to the next level?
I started nordic skiing at five, but by the age of eight, the very famous nordic coach Larry Stone came to our practice and he showed us a video of ski jumping. It had everything from ski flying to little kids jumping. It was set to Van Halen and got us all super fired up. And we got sucked into trying ski jumping. I knew right away that that's what I loved to do. So that was really my sport entry point into nordic combined.
As you progressed, was there a secret to the success you all enjoyed?
How does all that talent, quote unquote, talent, come out of one little place? The more that we've been around it and the closer that we've gotten to it being the best in the world, the more we realize it's not in the water. There's nothing really that special. But there is something about the power of the group. And to kind of switch gears and talk about nordic combined, we had the same sort of situation where a visionary coach, Tom Steitz, brought the nordic combined team together because he saw that, ‘hey, this is a small sport in a big country,’ and if everybody trains on their own, then they're not going to be is as strong as the power of the group. And so he basically mandated back in ‘94 that everybody that wanted to be on the team had to move to Steamboat Springs and show up every day when the coaches said, to be on the national team. And that really started to yield this same sort of group aspect in the nordic combined team.
As your team grew together, was there a turning point?
The most important thing that led to success across the board from our junior group to our nordic combined national team group was having that sort of day-to-day interaction with your group and then having somebody get out in front. It was most important that we felt like we were peers on a level playing field. And then once somebody reached the next level, we all felt that we could get there, too. And we inspired each other. We challenged each other. It took a number of different kinds of ways over time. When Johnny Spillane really started to hit some of our breakout performances, like his World Championship victory in 2003 - the first ever for an American nordic skier - it just opened the door for the rest of us to say, ‘well, hey, you know, I love Johnny and he's a super talented guy, but I definitely beat him in training as many times as he beat me. And therefore, he might have the gold medal, but I know I could do it, too.’
Was your gold in Vancouver and the team’s four medals a culmination?
It wasn't like I had to win in Vancouver. It was more realistically looking at the time frame and then taking stepping stone goals that I felt were achievable to put myself in a position to be able to win, whether or not I would. Vancouver was more like a deep sense of satisfaction and justification for all the things that we did to invest in our training and our careers to have that success. I never look back and say, ‘oh, my, oh, my gosh, that changed my life.’ Because, honestly, I think I owe a lot of my success to the attitude that if I had gotten fourth place, I would have gone on with my life without missing a beat. And that was kind of a healthy, mature way to approach it. And therefore, it put me in a position to be able to be successful.
What did you learn about life from your experience as an athlete?I've tried to use my own experience, especially on the athletic side of USANS, but also some of those bigger picture lessons that I learned on my way to being Olympic champion, which was always to have fun. If it's not fun, it's time to re-evaluate. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that you really have to compete like you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. So I try to take that to my workplace as well as instill that in our athletes. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid of losing. Your mother will love you. The sun will rise. We're all going to keep you as a teammate. But take that burden away and let's focus on winning because winning is fun.
This winter we’ll see more steps for women’s nordic combined!
It's the last Olympic discipline without gender equity. I have watched Tara Geraghty Moats and our up-and-coming athletes work really hard, and especially Tara dedicated to this a decade ago. And to see her pursue this without really a strong knowledge of where it was going to go is absolutely a hats off to her. I've never seen an elite sport where the nations and the athletes, both men and women, have come together to really focus on building that future to be viable and equitable for the women's nordic combined athletes in the world. And so we're going into the first season of women's World Cup nordic combined, and we'll have the inaugural women's World Championship. I'm proud of the camaraderie that we've felt inside of the sport of nordic combined, listeni...
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COMPETING IN A COVID WORLD
On the eve of the 2020-21 season and a pandemic still gripping the world, every day offers new changes and challenges. USA Nordic ski jumpers Nina Lussi of Lake Placid, N.Y. and Andrew Urlaub from the Flying Eagles Ski Club in Eau Claire, Wis. experienced that firsthand this fall, competing in Europe at COVID-shortened FIS Ski Jumping Grand Prix events.
Ski jumping commentator Peter Graves caught up with the two ski jumpers with an insightful conversation for Ticket to Fly, the USA Nordic podcast Competing in a COVID World. The episode takes a look at life training and traveling in Europe and experiences learned that could foreshadow the season ahead.
CHATTING WITH NINA AND ANDREW
Veteran ski jumper Nina Lussi (Lake Placid, N.Y.) and rising young star Andrew Urlaub (Eau Claire, Wis.) took a break from fall training to speak with commentator Peter Graves in Vermont on a fall day with the season looming ahead. Lussi was online from her pre-season training base in Courchevel, France, home of the 1992 Olympic ski jumping complex. Urlaub took a break from the beach on the gulf coast of Florida.
The two came from very different backgrounds with Lussi steeped in family Olympic sport tradition and Urlaub discovering a niche sport in a Wisconsin town with a deep culture for ski jumping.
Nina, you really had quite a family tradition.
Growing up in Lake Placid, I guess originally I kind of took it all for granted it was part of life to just experiment with all of the different sports and coming from a pretty athletic family. I did basically everything growing up, and it wasn't until much later that I was able to appreciate what my family had given me and also the legacy that my great grandfather, Gus, left behind, and that was in figure skating. I'm not very involved in that world at all. But, yeah, it was cool growing up. I ski raced, I learned how to figure skate, played soccer and track - cross country running a little cross-country skiing. Growing up in the Adirondacks is really, really special to have everything so close.
You are part of the ‘next generation’ of women ski jumpers. Who were your role models?
What's really special about my position is those pioneering women are friends, role models and people that I got to know. I remember when I was in elementary school and I printed out pictures of Lindsey Van, Jessica Jerome, Anette Sagen. They were so cool to me. Then about 10 years later, I was competing with them and friendly with them. And it's really cool to see that they got to see all of their work pay off. And now the Olympics and World Cup is really competitive for women. And it's just great.
Andrew, you may not have the same Olympic tradition in Eau Claire as in Lake Placid. How did you get into ski jumping in western Wisconsin.
I'm actually the opposite of Nina. My family had zero background in skiing and there were actually a lot of wrestlers in my family. So you could say a similar body type. But I think the rich culture and the background of Eau Claire in ski jumping that just made it all the better to be a ski jumper.
You’re still a very young ski jumper but starting to have some success. Was this something you expected?
No, and looking back on it, I did not expect this at all. But I think the time that I grew up was a great time in the Flying Eagles history books. We had many people on the US team competing in Europe, and so they were great role models to look up to, such as the Mattoons, the Loomis', the Andersons. When I was growing up, I got to look up to them and see what they were doing and that's what I wanted, wanted to do.
Do you feel like you're kind of carrying the torch at the international level for for the club?
No, Ben Loomis is still going strong. I have not seen Ben recently. I hope he's doing well. Right now it's myself and Ben Loomis and we're carrying the torch and we're representing the Flying Eagles.
You were the lone U.S. man competing in the Grand Prix this fall in Wisla, Poland. How was your experience there?
As a team, we had a pretty late start to the summer. We normally start jumping in early June. We didn't get our first jumps until about the middle of July. So it was a quick turnaround to be competing internationally that soon. So the consistency wasn't there. I think the jumps were close, but just not enough repetitions on the hill yet in the summer to have the consistency up. It was a good building block. Looking back on it, I'm very glad we went and. It was a good cornerstone for the summer and looking into the winter.
Nina, you’ve been training this summer and fall on the Olympic jumps in Courchevel. How have you managed with the pandemic?
It's really a blessing to be up in the mountains. We are pretty secluded. And the team that I'm training with is the French national team. There are five girls, myself included, and then two coaches that are with us all the time. It's an interesting setup they have because a lot of the girls aren’t from Courchevel. But they move here to train in the summer. So we're basically a very closed group. All of the sessions on the hill have been structured so that there is an overlap. We need to wear masks on the funicular and when we're waiting to get on. We need to set distance from each other. And if you're feeling sick at all, you're advised not to come to training. Luckily, tests are pretty accessible here. So you make a scheduled COVID test then go down to one of the nearest cities, which is either an hour or two hours away, and get your test. They usually get the results about a day later. And so that way we've been able to to keep ourselves clean in a way. Which has been really great. We actually did have one positive test, which was pretty alarming. We were on the edge of having to shut things down for a couple of weeks. But we all got tested and it was a lone case. So that member was then removed from the group for two weeks until they're better and then they can rejoin.
It’s one thing to be based in the mountain village of Courchevel, but you also traveled to the Grand Prix at Frenštát in the Czech Republic.
It was a risk going to the Grand Prix, but they did a really good job of having rules and distancing. Just being conscious and getting tested regularly is how it's going to be in the winter. So it's great, great practice.
Were there spectators in Frenštát?
I believe the rules were no spectators, but, it's a famous jumping hill and there isn't much going on in this region. So there were a few people that gathered, but it was enforced that they stayed distanced. There were probably 20-30 people watching there's plenty of room and it's summer. So people were spread out. It wasn't that hard to manage. For the athletes, yeah, we all had our own changing areas and it was fenced off. So within the fence you could warm up without a mask on because getting sweaty in the mask is not really that great. But outside of the mask, you are distancing and or outside of the fence you are distancing and wearing the masks.
Andrew, overall, how has COVID impacted your training?
At the beginning, it was ve...
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Logan Sankey is just 22, but wise beyond her years. Since competing in the Youth Olympic Games at Lillehammer in 2016, she’s made the jump out of juniors, gotten through heart surgery and is making her way into the World Cup, traveling the world with the U.S. Women’s Ski Jumping Team.
She was born in Denver and dad had her on skis at age two. Soon it was up into the mountains every weekend (she skied every run on Steamboat’s Mt. Werner when she was six), eventually moving to Steamboat Springs when she was 12.
Sankey shared her life story on the Heartbeat podcast with Peter Graves, talking everything from capital cities of the world to knitting. Here’s a sample from the podcast. Subscribe to Heartbeat to hear more.
CHATTING WITH SKI JUMPER LOGAN SANKEY
How are you coping with COVID-19?
As athletes, we've kind of always been working from home because you're always cooking meals and doing more and stretching and working on stuff outside of the gym since you really do live your job as an athlete. So in some ways, things haven't changed too much, but we definitely have had to get super creative without some workouts, especially at the beginning when we couldn't go to the gym at all and we couldn't go to the gym. So definitely some fun core workouts, some interesting balance activities, the things you just had lying around the house. But really, the shift has been more about the distance between athletes and coaches and also a lot more distance between the next time we actually compete, because, like you said, we're not actually sure when that's going to be.
Are you still a local in Steamboat?
Sometimes I joke that it makes what could be a super quick trip to the grocery store take 45 minutes because you run into six people that you know, but especially after traveling all over the world and competing, which can definitely sometimes be very isolating. It's so nice to come back to a town and a community and place where you really know that there are people who care about you and that community supports both me and all sorts of other athletes.
What first got you into ski jumping?
When I was an alpine skier, we would use the ski jump at Howelsen Hill to just practice for downhill training because in alpine skiing, when you go off a jump, you don't want to be in the air very long. You want to press and get down to the ground as fast as you can, because that's a lot faster. And so in alpine, we would practice pressing off the end of the ski jump so we would have more body control in the air. But we had a super awesome coach and he would always let us just send it on our last two of the session whenever we got to practice on the jump. So we would just get to jump as far as we could on our last two of the training. And I thought that was so fun. And that is what kind of inspired me to. After that, I was invited to the first ever Fly Girls camp. And after spending the whole summer jumping In Park City, that's when I decided to make the switch full time to do jumping and kind of put alpine just as a fun recreational thing and commit my competitive aspect towards jumping. And I think I was 16 at the time, which is definitely kind of late by most standards. But I'm really glad that I made that decision to switch.
Are you fearful ski jumping?
I used to just say, no, no, I'm never scared because I thought, like, that was what all ski jumpers said, that they just had no fear and could just blow themselves off the jump. But as I've gotten older and have done more reflecting, I think that if you really say that you've never been scared while jumping, I think I think you got to be lying because there are some times when the conditions are funky or maybe you've just watched one of your teammates fall, but you still have to compete.
When a ‘routine’ hip surgery led you to heart surgery, did you ever think your career was over?
I don't think I ever entertained that thought, even for a little bit because of injury. I think all of the doctors I worked with and my coaches were all pretty supportive and motivating to be like, yeah, this is no problem, girl. You're going to get the surgery. You're going to do the rehab. We know you're going to put in the work that you have to do and then you're going to be fine. You're going to come back stronger. You're going to be better than ever. And I think in a lot of ways that's true because I don't have pain in my hip anymore. And, you know, my heart's not going to be an issue.
Now that you’re on the national team, do you see yourself as more of a role model?
It's really important that all those young girls who are doing two or three sports like I was as a kid, see girls having fun in the sport that they might want to continue in - not just having fun, but being successful and and pushing boundaries and furthering the sport in general so that they say I really love ski jumping, and there is a future here for me and I can see myself doing what Logan's doing.
Do you define success by gold, silver or bronze?
That's a good question, because when all is said and done, the things on the scoresheet, the things that are on paper are just what place you are in and whether you won or maybe you lost. While it's very easy to say I didn't succeed here because I didn't win or my goal was to be top five and I was seven, so this is an unsuccessful event. I think a lot of athletics is so much about what you take away from it and what you learn about yourself as an athlete and a person.
What about the importance of teammates?
Having teammates you get along with is such an important part of sports that is often taken for granted. You spend literally all day, every day with your teammates, working out together, eating together, rooming together. So it is so Important to have those team dynamics, especially if everyone's getting on each other's nerves and no one's going to be in a good mood, which can definitely end up affecting performance. Part of that is just spending more time together and getting to know each other more. It’s figuring out which buttons not to press and knowing each team as individuals, especially because we didn't all grow up together, because we're all from different parts of the country. I know that my teammates have my back and I hope they know that I've always got their back to.
Logan, do you know, the capital of Belarus?
Yeah, it's Minsk.
Watch for Logan Sankey on the women’s World Cup tour this winter. And listen to the full version of her podcast with Peter Graves on Heartbeat: The USA Nordic Podcast, available on all podcast platforms.
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Longtime athlete, coach and program leader Jed Hinkley has experience at every level of the sport. He grew up in New Hampshire, skiing both alpine and cross country, as well as picking up ski jumping. A journeyman member of the U.S. Nordic Combined Ski Team, he was a 2002 Olympian. Today, he has taken over as sport director for USA Nordic. Hinkley got with legendary nordic commentator Peter Graves for an insightful look into his past and his vision for USA Nordic.
How did you get into nordic sport?Much like many people, I believe I actually started downhill skiing or alpine skiing probably around the age of two or three. I had gotten into jumping because my dad had been a four event skier growing up, mainly a downhill skier, but also skied cross country and jumped a little bit.
Who was an influential coach for you growing up?Tim Norris was my first ski jumping coach. I believe Tim started coaching ski jumping in 1969 at Proctor and then I think he actually formed the Andover Outing Club. I actually like to use Tim as a great example. Not having a whole lot of base, he coached ski jumping for nearly 50 years. You don’t have to be an amazing ski jumper to be an amazing ski jumping coach. He is one of my favorite coaches and human beings as well.
What lessons did you take from your development director job into your new job as sport director?We work in ski jumping because we love the sport, but I also think that it is a great vehicle to instill values that go beyond just the ski jump. I have a bit of a different perspective coming from a small club. In my previous role, it was an understanding of what it takes to run a small ski jumping club and the amount of work you have to put into hill prep, you know, getting athletes to events and just making it fun. Tim made it fun for us. One of the things that it definitely taught me was, you do stuff because you’re passionate about it. You do stuff because it’s the right thing to do. Being outdoors, skiing on snow, is something every kid should have the opportunity to do. Nordic combined gave me a great appreciation for being outside in the winter. Certainly having to jump off the ski jump gives you some courage and some ability to overcome barriers. And then on the cross-country side, just the determination and the willingness – a willingness to sort of put it all out and give it all you got.
Coming from a small club, you appreciate the role of volunteers.Depending on how you count them, we have between 28 and 30 ski jumping clubs in the United States. I would say about 24 of them are run on a largely volunteer base. The vast majority of our clubs are completely run by parents, volunteers, former jumpers and by people who just have a passion for the sport. We wouldn’t have our sport in this country without that base. I do believe that we need to move in a more professional direction. And I do like to see more coaches paid so that we can just kind of have it be more of a profession that people can pursue. But I never want to forget those small clubs. And I always want to try to support our existing clubs that are doing so much to keep the sport going and to actually grow the sport.
What was your career like as an athlete and what lessons did you take away?I’m certainly proud of those accomplishments, but I would say within my sport, I was maybe a bit more of a journeyman. I spent the majority of my career on the Continental Cup. But I think that one thing I took away is that I think that does help me give me some perspective on what a lot of other athletes are going through. The sort of struggles that a lot of athletes have trying to make it and pursue their dreams and perform and compete at the highest level.
You had exposure as an athlete to the early days of success of Todd Lodwick and others. How important is the hero factor in motivating athletes?It’s really important for the younger athletes coming up to see the older athletes and see their heroes compete and being part of that environment. But at the same time, international events are expensive and it takes a ton of manpower to put them on. We’re really trying to find creative ways on how we can continue to host Continental Cups, FIS Cups and potentially World Cups in the future. They are integral to our sport here in this country, to inspiring the next generation and then also providing opportunities for athletes. But it’s certainly not an easy task to undertake.
What have you learned in your engagement with USA Nordic clubs?When I took over the development role, it was certainly very important for me to not just be consulting with clubs from far away and not having an understanding of what was going on. I visited around 15 clubs per year. I would usually take about 11 to 12 trips and spent a lot of time talking to coaches, parents, athletes – helping out with things, holding clinics – but also just listening and hearing. How is your program growing or not growing? What are your biggest challenges? What are your biggest successes? There are certainly challenges and things that are unique to certain clubs, but there also sort of some universal challenges that I heard – getting the hills in shape, finding enough coaches because it isn’t really a profession, and then kind of having the money to be able to run quality programs. There isn’t a sort of one size fits all model that’s going to work for every club. But it’s really just trying to work with each individual club on doing the little tweaks, the little things that you can do to get more kids to to keep them at the club and little bit by little bit, continue to make progress and grow.
What things do clubs need?I’m sure there’s not a sport out there that isn’t going to say we couldn’t use more money. And, you know, that’s true. But there is stuff that goes beyond money. And I would say that one thing that was universal from a club perspective is keeping the hills in shape. Our volunteer base for clubs is certainly aging and we’re sort of relying on the same people that were working on the hills when I was an athlete. And the standards at which we expect ski jumps to be is continually going up. What was acceptable when I was a kid is not acceptable today.
When I went to Slovenia to visit clubs, it wasn’t like they had these immaculate, unbelievable facilities. Actually, their strongest club looked a lot like some of our clubs here in the U.S. in terms that not everything was perfect. They were kind of, I wouldn’t say rundown, but it had some wear and tear. But what Europe, and Slovenia in particular, has more of than us, is that more clubs have a better progression of hills. They have more clubs with better progression of hills from small to big. And the other thing is, is they have hills with plastic on them where kids can jump consistently during the summer.
How would you assess USA Nordic today?We’re about 10 years old. What has been done by the people before me in 10 years is pretty impressive. I also know that we’ve reached a point at which we want to take the next step in terms of performance on an international stage and really become more solidly in the top ranks at all levels. That’s not just going to happen overnight. But there’s going to have to be some very intentional work done to get us there. And the buck stops with me.
You’re new in your position, but how are you formulating things?I moved into it in mid-May where I think we were all sort of still hopeful that COVID and coronavirus would come and go. And clearly it has not come and ...
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TRANSCRIPT (NOTE time references are not accurate)
Ep 1 - Walter Hofer
Peter Graves: [00:00:09] Thank you very much, Tom Kelly, and welcome everybody to USA Nordic Ticket to Fly. We'll be talking to newsmakers in the sport of ski jumping and Nordic combined every month. And we're very, very happy to have all of you listeners with us. A very exciting show today. We are going to have Walter Hofer who for almost 30 years, was the FIS ski jump race director. He has done a wonderful job and at recently retired after a great tenure. First of all, Walter, let me welcome you to the show, and it's a joy to have you with us.
Walter Hofer: [00:00:59] Thank you very much for that invitation. Thank you.
Peter Graves: [00:01:01] Well, you are so welcome. So let me start at the beginning by asking you, how did you get into ski jumping? I don't believe you were a jumper. But is that right?
Walter Hofer: [00:01:17] No, but I was always involved in any kind of sport. Mostly in football (soccer) myself. But then I started to do a second educational system. I started to study physical education. And at the age of 25 when I was searching for a job to do work in between my study. And I was asked by the Austrian Ski Federation. They were looking for a physio. And they were looking for a kind of service men. And they took me. I saw this offer in a newspaper and I made a telephone call. And they took me just right away. And that was the first day of a full time job. For the next thirty eight years. So who was my stepping in as standing on the sideline watching ski jumping? I was always interested in ski jumping on TV. But I have never seen it onsite yet.
Peter Graves: [00:02:19] Very interesting. So you grew up in Austria, where did you grow up?
Walter Hofer: [00:02:25] In the southern part of Austria as ski jumping fans know it's nearby, Planica in Slovenia and nearby Villach, which is a small town nearby. My village is on the lake, Millstätter See, and the village is known. Seeboden.
Peter Graves: [00:02:48] Ok. OK. Well, Austria, of course, such a big hub of ski jumping activity. So you played such a decisive and important role in charting the course for ski jumping. And let me ask you to begin with what your you retired had plenty to. That was the final day for you. So it's near your home. And you must have been reflective of what you had achieved in the different things you did. Tell me a little bit about maybe your thoughts going in your mind that day and in the subsequent months about what you did for the sport of jumping.
Walter Hofer: [00:03:42] First of all, it brings me back to my first engagement in ski jumping when I was servicemen and the second coach for the Austrian Ski Federation, then I was asked by the Germans Ski Federation for another four year to be the second coach for the Rudi Tusch who was the head coach at that moment. So all in all, ten years I was standing on the sideline and I was watching ski jumping and whatever it takes, I saw that there is a certain value in this sport. It also very small, tiny side event - it was not very much taken by the popularity, by the spectators. And what I saw there is something in this sport which has to be shown, has to be wrapped up in another way because ski jumping was already. very interesting to see. But at that time, the TV coverage and access for the spectators onsite was very limited.
Peter Graves: [00:04:49] And you know, it's interesting to me, having spent time in the World Cup circuit and Olympic Games with with jumping and and I think this is during your tenure, the ratings. And this is particularly in Europe. But the ratings for ski jumping are simply off the charts. They are amongst the highest rated shows ever. And so maybe a two part question. What draws people in to watch it on television? And secondly, you must be very proud to have been part of that, a tremendous resurgence of what is a very old sport.
Walter Hofer: [00:05:32] I start to answer the second question. I never took it as my work. I had obviously feeling that I was just coordinating a group of people, mostly the members of the Jumping Committee of FIS. I had great support from the FIS. Yes, from from the president Gian Franco Kasper. And they let us work and do what we wanted to do. So it was teamwork starting from the athletes, the coaches, the officials. And finally, I was just kind of coordinating system and it was small enough - the discipline. So to do it n one table, this was very good in the very beginning because it started very, very deep with all the changes. Because when I started to to try and if I ask to join ski jumping in my race director's role, ski jumping had four different formats. Nobody actually knew what's going on in ski flying when they had three rounds and only two were counting. And compared with Olympic Games or championships, which was also different. And the World Cup also had enough at another regulation. So the first three years to just to unify, to form one and the same rule. And this is this was the basis to create one and the same format. And the format was actually the first step to the popularity. That means in the old days when I was coaching, we had starting fields of more than 100 or 120 athletes.
Walter Hofer: [00:07:19] So you can imagine in the first round then the old system, and you had to change the inrun gate after number 70 and number 71 was continuing and another 120 athletes had to jump. TV told us, do your job. We make some pictures and at the end of the day, we make it if we make a delayed summary. So it was not attractive enough to take its key jumping live. And this was the very beginning to start to cooperate with TV, because in the old days as a coach, we were always somehow hiding the athletes from the public. We didn't want to show where are the changing rooms. We didn't want to show the athletes when they are close to the starting gate. We didn't want to show them when they were exposed to their own environment. So we hide it somehow, their surroundings around ski jumping and TV, they just took the jumps, more or less wanted the same repetition. We saw three, four or five cameras. They just choose the right position, which was the easiest for them. And so ski jumping was mostly at that time just delayed or a long lasting competition. So then we started to.
Walter Hofer: [00:08:47] And then suddenly, as soon as we have found this kind of format that we use a qualification, that we use our first competition round with a certain number. And the second round was only a final round. TV started to be interested on us. And then they asked us, can we go to the athletes area? Can we go to the Warm-Up room at the start? Can we go with cameras somewhere closer to the performance of the athletes? And in the very beginning, we were very reluctant but be together as the coaches and the athletes, we were willing to move towards the TV coverage. And suddenly, when you look at ski jumping competition today for a tournament, we use more than 30 cameras to evaluate the ski jumping event. And this springs ski jumping from any angle of performance. And this is one of the successful starts. And it was one of the successful starts to have good TV coverage. And that brought us spectators onside. And that brought us some spectators on TV. And this this was one of the first steps. We still had one problem. It was the transition from the classical style to the V style. So it was a very, ve...
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Ticket to Fly from USA Nordic featuring noted nordic commentator Peter Graves will take you inside the international world of ski jumping and nordic combined. In this special Ticket to Ride preview, sport leader Tom Kelly and Olympian Ben Berend join Peter Graves to share stories and talk about the thrilling sports of ski jumping and nordic combined
