USA TODAY International Edition
Holidays are workdays for ski team
Bjornsen enjoys unique traditions
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone on the U.S. cross country ski team who loves Christmas more than Olympian Sadie Bjornsen.
This year Bjornsen celebrated Christmas at home in Alaska on Oct. 26 with a special meal, close friends and a few presents under the tree.
“A lot of times when people ask what is the hardest thing about your sport, my answer is always missing family during the holidays,” Bjornsen, 28, said last week in a phone interview from Davos, Switzerland, where the team was staying. “It’s a tough part of our job. I’m somebody who loves the holidays. I live and breathe for them.”
Bjornsen’s results of late have given her plenty of reason to celebrate. She has two top-three finishes on the World Cup tour, her best start to the season since joining the national team in 2011. She has met one of the selection criteria for the U.S. Olympic team, which will be named next month.
And one of the contributing factors to her success, she says, has been having her younger brother Erik, 26, travel the world with her competing. Erik Bjornsen is a member of the U.S. men’s cross country team.
“Sometimes you have to bounce (an idea) off a wall and have them come back positive and turn your feelings around,” Sadie said of the ups and down of competing on the World Cup circuit. “It is so nice having Erik around; he’s so positive all of the time and he has a really good outlook on everything. For sure I think it’s been a secret to both of our success.”
Along with their older sister Kaley, Sadie and Erik grew up skiing with their parents in Winthrop, Wash., where they had a cross country trail outside their back door. Sadie decided to attend college in Alaska, first at the University of Alaska-Anchorage and then Alaska Pacific University (also in Anchorage), and Erik followed her there.
“Up until probably high school we were training together all the time, pushing each other quite a bit,” Erik said last week. “Since high school she’s just kind of been one step ahead of me and kind of shown me the way to make it to the World Cup level. … It’s been fun to watch her. She’s been kind of a role model of mine.”
The Bjornsens are seeking their second trip together to the Olympic Games. In Pyeongchang, Sadie Bjornsen and her teammates are aiming to become the first American women to win an Olympic medal when the Games begin Feb. 9. The U.S. men have one Olympic medal in team history — a silver won by Bill Koch in 1976.
In last year’s world championships in Finland, Sadie teamed with Jessie Diggins to win the bronze medal in the classic team sprint. On the men’s side, Erik and teammate Simi Hamilton finished fifth, the top performance by U.S. men in the team sprint in world championship history.
Sadie Bjornsen and Diggins are part of the U.S. women’s team that has shown considerable depth since the 2014 Sochi Games. Kikkan Randall is hoping to make her fifth Olympic team and has three overall World Cup sprint titles. Sophie Caldwell, who in 2014 was sixth in the Olympic freestyle sprint to lead the Americans in Sochi, earned her first World Cup win in 2016.
Both Bjornsen siblings say the U.S. cross country team is its own tight-knit family. The World Cup men and women’s races are held at the same venues week to week during the season.
It’s the team’s closeness that produces another one of Sadie Bjornsen’s favorite Christmas traditions. They hold a Secret Santa every year that has teammates, coaches and technicians drawing names. This year they could choose to draw a portrait of the person whose name they select or write a poem. They also donate $15 to a charity that best represents the recipient’s values, Sadie says, and the night of the big reveal is hilarious.
Around Christmastime, the team always stays at the same hotel in Davos, called The Kulm, because there’s a World Cup race in the area.
“There’s such a history here, picture of the old teams on the wall. It feels like home away from home,” Sadie said.
After racing in Italy last weekend, Sadie will spend Christmas Eve with her French family near Meribel — her fiancé is French. There’s a little break in the competition schedule before the Tour de Ski begins in Switzerland on Dec. 30 with only five weeks before the Olympics begin.
“The last Olympics it was big stress to make the team; that was everything I was focused on,” Sadie said. “It’s really exciting this year because I feel like now my focus is to win a medal at the Olympics. Certainly making the team is a step in that process and then having some good races in the Olympic events are something that are really exciting and encouraging for me.”