Johno McBride '88 leads U.S. speed team training camp in the Andes
photo by Jonathan Selkowitz
Olympics
UVM in the rings
Skiers, skaters, hockey players — University of Vermont connections to the Winter Olympics run long and deep. Over 50 years and through 14 consecutive Olympics, UVM alumni have suited up for the United States at the Winter Games. And when the torch is lit for Torino 2006, a trio of UVM alums working for the U.S. Ski Team — Jesse Hunt, Johno McBride, and Trond Nystad — will be poised to help their athletes as they step onto winter sports’ biggest stage.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
On the mountain, in the valley, it’s all about balance for Johno McBride
“We’re selling a quarter for five bucks a pound. That includes tenderloins, ground, sirloins, New Yorks, and everything else,” says Johno McBride ’88, head speed coach for the United States Ski Team. “That’s 75 pounds of meat in your freezer at, I think, a very fair price. You can’t go down and buy organic meat in the grocery store for that.”
It’s good to be home. After spending the better part of October with his team in Chile, where McBride led a pre-season training camp, the ski coach/cattle rancher is back on the family place in Old Snowmass, Colorado. Last week he was in the Andes, heading up operations for a full-entourage of 27, including the seven downhill/super-G skiers who make up the U.S. speed team, gold medal contenders Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves among them. Today, McBride is both family man, home on the ranch with his wife, Sunshine, and young daughters, Ruby and Lucy; and cattle man, just back from two days driving a 16-foot freezer truck around the Aspen Valley to deliver 48 quarters of grass-raised organic beef.
Pondering the fact that he is likely one of the few people on the planet who can, with equal degrees of expertise and passion, discuss the fastest lines at Kitzbühel and cuts of meat, McBride laughs quietly. “You know, you’ve got to keep it a little diverse.”
First impression, Johno McBride is Rocky Mountain cool, laid back, unflappable, understated in all. Reflecting on the fact that not long after the 2002 Winter Olympics the athletes on the U.S. speed team directly requested that he assume the head coach role, McBride says, “That was nice to know.” On his motivational style: “I’m not a rah, rah, hype ’em up. I’d rather dig deeper, see what inspires them.”
The United States speed team has been on an inspired run over the past several years. Miller took the World Cup super-G and overall titles last season and also won the downhill and super-G at the World Championships. Rahlves has risen to his potential with a 2003 World Cup victory in the downhill in the fabled Hahnenkamm race at Kitzbühel, followed it up with the super-G championship on the same mountain in 2004, and took silver behind Miller’s gold at the 2005 World Championships. While his athletes have collected medals, McBride has earned his own honors with the USSA International Coach of the Year Award in 2003 and 2005.
McBride’s coaching role spans planning the speed team’s conditioning programs to handling the myriad logistics of travel and training camps, analyzing the course at competitions to occasionally offering up a skier some well-timed, clear-eyed perspective.
Considering his most famous charge, McBride is frank. “Bode’s a know-it-all. It’s not a fault — he’s just got the answers to everything. He can be a challenging guy to manage because of that. Every once in a while you’ve just got to sit down and say, ‘Hey, Bode, that is B.S. This is what’s important. Keep your ducks in a row and move forth.’ I’m not intimidated by him; I just want to see him perform to his potential.
Keeping Miller focused and excited about being a world-class skier is a key part of coaching him; with Rahlves, McBride’s challenge has been helping him rise to that level. “Some of the issues Daron had in the past were tactical errors,” McBride says.
“Presenting that to him in a fashion where he understood it, letting him figure out where he can work on it and tackle that made a huge difference.”
In a highly individual sport like alpine skiing, building Rahlves, Miller, and teammates into a cohesive team unit is, in itself, a major accomplishment for McBride. The Americans’ style is loose and casual, in contrast to the typical intensity of the European downhillers. (Describing the vibe the U.S. speed team radiated at one championship event, Skiing Magazine wrote “…the Americans seem to both irritate and fascinate the other racers, like a clique of popular jocks in the high school cafeteria.”) McBride leads the way, finding fun amid all the hard work. Known to cut loose with a wolf howl wake-up call over the race radios, some of his superstar management and motivational techniques bring to mind NBA coach Phil Jackson. Once McBride, who had a fair amount of wildlife biology in his self-designed UVM major, handed out individually selected animal talismans to his skiers, each symbolizing the athlete’s particular style. (Miller was a stallion; Rahlves, a bull; doubtless, no three-toed sloths in the pack.)
“I think a super-important part of our team is that people are supportive of each other and that they enjoy their time together. So there is a good amount of laughing and giving each other a hard time,” McBride says. “I think the team lacked that and now it is a pretty nice place. There is very little ego with the coaching staff and how we operate within the team, and I think that carries on to the athletes.”
It’s been a swift rise through the coaching ranks for McBride. Not long ago, his athletes were the kids at the Aspen Valley Ski Club, where he began his coaching career and where he first developed his own skills as a young skier. While teaching in Aspen and coaching hockey, McBride was asked by former UVM ski teammate and college roommate Jesse Hunt ’90 to teach a power skating clinic for the U.S. team, his first connection with the program. A stint coaching at a training camp followed, and it wasn’t long before McBride joined the USSA staff.
Come mid-February, McBride will face his biggest challenge yet in keeping athletes focused in the face of intense pressure as the 2006 Olympic downhill and Super G competitions take place in Sestriere Borgata. While World Cup wins and World Championships are lifetime achievements, the media attention on the Olympics brings a whole new level of stress.
“The big guys know that there is a lot at stake,” McBride says.
Whether his skiers strike gold or go bust at Sestriere, one suspects that it won’t take McBride long to put it all in perspective after the closing ceremonies and his return to Colorado. Considering his rare dual-existence, he says, “To be able to come home and be on the ranch, and live on the land, be involved in the cattle business, you know, I love it.”
Athlete’s view
VQ asked Daron Rahlves for his thoughts on working with Johno McBride. Via e-mail, here’s what the Olympic medal contender had to say.
Johno is to the point. That is what I respect most about him as a coach. He has a good eye on the hill and whenever he sees something good or bad he voices his opinion right away. I’ve run across a bunch of coaches in my career who blow too much sunshine or hold back. Johno will tell it like it is.
Johno works incredibly hard on behalf of his athletes. It's not unusual to catch him still in his work clothes well after dark. For him it’s a set of coach’s bibs, ski boots, and a dirty Spyder coat that gets tons of abuse on the hill with chair-lift grease, dye, tree bark and sap, even dirt. He scrambles all over the World Cup hills for the best advantage to film us or get a good eye on the line.
Another thing he brings to the table is a lot of fun and humor. He keeps a strong positive attitude. I mean when there is absolutely no chance to pull a day of training off due to crappy weather conditions, he somehow feels like there is a way.
I don’t know where he gets all his energy. He must secretly suck down five to six Red Bulls a day.
Building the best
Jesse Hunt leads alpine charge
Two years ago, Jesse Hunt ’90, alpine director for the U.S. Ski Team, said, “Our goal for eight years has been: Best in the world in 2006. During that time we have continually raised the performance bar — and the athletes have responded.” With that deadline fast approaching, we checked in with Hunt at his Park City, Utah office.
What’s been key to helping the U.S. alpine team build toward being on top in 2006?
We’ve philosophically driven in a direction where we’ve tried to satisfy our older athletes and keep them on board while they develop. Years ago the oldest athletes on our teams were 23 or 24. Now we’ve got some athletes who are over 30 and are very successful. They’re bringing a certain level of maturity and confidence to the teams, and I think that’s been an important piece.
Are you ever frustrated by the fact that so much media attention is placed exclusively on the Olympics when U.S. skiers have had great success in other competitions recently?
It is a little frustrating, for sure. Even people who are interested in the sport have a hard time finding it on TV. The hard core fans, obviously, have found their way to OLN to find coverage of some of the events and that has definitely helped things along. But it doesn’t have a great presence and that is frustrating, because we have some great athletes in our system and it is an exciting sport. It’s got all of those elements of speed and danger and just great athleticism.
Looking back, did you graduate from UVM with hopes for a career involved with competitive skiing?
I was a geology major. [Hunt’s father, Alan, is a UVM professor emeritus of geology.] I graduated with the thought that I’d go into something in geology, but did some internships and work in the field just out of school and realized I had the passion to stay in athletics. I coached for a local club here in Park City for three years before starting with the national team and coached nine years with the team before taking on the role I’m in now.
You’ve got what would be a dream job to many. What’s the tough part?
It is a challenge to keep the teams moving in the right directions in some of the aspects of funding and prioritizing. One of the things that I’m trying to do is look at the whole pipeline, men and women, from an elite level to a grassroots or a club level. That brings on its challenges.
Trond Nystad shouts encouragement to former UVM skier Kris Freeman,
a member of the U.S. national team
photo by Peter Vordenberg
On track
Trond Nystad guides rise of U.S. Nordic fortunes
As a UVM student-athlete, Trond Nystad ’94 achieved what could be one of college sports’ rarest doubles. The Norwegian skier notched an NCAA Championship in 1992 with his victory in the 20-kilometer classical race; two years later, he would graduate magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with his bachelor’s in business administration. If there’s a career track that requires a unique combination of ferocious aerobic capacity and business acumen, Nystad may have found it as head cross country coach for the United States Ski Team.
His racing days are behind him, but Nystad’s years of ski experience are still put to the test in the head coaching job he took on not long after the 2002 Winter Olympics. And his expertise in the business world (he also earned an MBA from the University of Denver, where he assisted twin brother and UVM ’94 classmate Knut’s national champion ski program) is required daily in the multi-faceted job of a coach/administrator responsible for the development and performance of the best cross country skiers in the nation.
On a late-October afternoon, Nystad has just returned to his USSA office after two hours of morning roller skiing with the team on the roads around Park City, Utah. The coach distills his responsibilities into something that might be a corporate mission statement without the window dressing — “our job is to make sure the skiers go as fast as they can in a variety of races.” Olympic year, yes, that is important, but there is a lot more out there as American skiers become increasingly competitive with the best in the world.
For Nystad, that means helping to train the athletes while respecting their individual approaches, and planning logistics in support of cross country skiers’ constant search for snow, New Zealand in August, and altitude, Park City in October. (At 1,600 meters, the 2002 Olympic cross country venue at nearby Soldier Hollow is very similar to the altitude of the Torino 2006 site.) Beyond that, the coach takes on everything from managing a tight budget to the science, or maybe art, of nailing the right wax on race day.
It’s a job that puts Nystad on the road for much of the year. His mailbox resides in Park City, but Nystad estimates he spends just 40 days a year there. “We travel so much that I guess home is where the bag is,” he says. His marriage in July to Claudia Künzel, a cross country gold medalist on Germany’s national team, adds to Nystad’s tally of frequent flyer miles. The couple will be together in Torino for the Olympics, where Nystad will balance the duties of supportive head coach and supportive husband. Always even keeled, he doesn’t sound too concerned about the multitasking. “I’ll be working to make sure the U.S. athletes can do well,” Nystad says, “and for Claudia it will be more of a role of family support and nothing to do with the training or preparation. Two different roles that, hopefully, shouldn’t be too hard to juggle.”
United States cross country skiers surprised the world with outstanding results at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, and took it up to another level at the next year’s World Championships. Nystad says that the 2003 performance was perhaps the best ever by the U.S. team and adds, “To me, that was a sign of what there is to come.” When the coach rattles off the to-do list that will be on his desk in Torino, he includes having a rock-solid plan not only to get the athletes to the race venue on time, but also to the medal ceremonies.
While his skiers may be legitimate medal contenders, there’s no denying that the U.S. team rolls into any competition as underdogs to the squads from countries where Nordic ski races draw thousands of spectators and national television cameras. When European teams put ten wax technicians to the task of finding the right grip and glide, the U.S. team has two. Nystad would love to see the sport get a fraction of the attention and support in the United States that it does in his native Norway. He sees it as a fairly simple business equation: performance equals media interest equals funding. But, of course, it often takes no less than an Olympic medal to get some press for a sport that isn’t on most Americans’ radar.
Andrew Newell, a U.S. team skier from southern Vermont, has been a strong voice behind the notion that American cross country skiing is a force of its own and doesn’t need to slavishly follow the fortunes and traditions of European teams. He says that United States skiers couldn’t have a stronger champion of that cause than their Nordic coach. “Anyone is proud of his own country, but he wants it just as bad as we do,” Newell says. “If an American medals and it takes a Norwegian off the podium, Trond would be fine with that.”
Catamount Olympians
The year after his graduation from UVM, Larry Damon ’55 got things rolling for Vermont alumni in the Winter Olympics when he landed a place on the U.S. team for the Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Damon would compete in three more Olympics before passing the, well, torch to the Cochran family and others who have assured that the University of Vermont has been represented in every Winter Olympics for the past 50 years.
1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 Larry Damon ’55, Nordic and biathlon
1972 Robert Cochran ’76, M.D.’81, Alpine; Barbara Ann Cochran ’78, Alpine; Marilyn Cochran ’79, Alpine; Trina Hosmer G’68, Nordic; Joseph Lamb ’78, Nordic combined
1976 Lindy Cochran ’82, Alpine; Stan Dunklee ’76, Nordic; Trina Hosmer G’68 Nordic
1980 Leslie Bancroft ’84, Nordic; Stan Dunklee ’76, Nordic; Betsy Haines ’84, Nordic; Beth Heiden ’83, speed skating; Elizabeth Paxson, Nordic
1984 Todd Boonstra ’89, Nordic; Michael Holland ’92, ski jumping; Bruce Likly ’87, Nordic; Kerrin Petty ’93, Nordic
1988 Leslie Bancroft ’84, Nordic; Todd Boonstra ’89, Nordic; Joe Galanes ’90, Nordic; Chris Hastings ’89, ski jumping; Michael Holland ’92, ski jumping; Joseph Holland ’90, Nordic combined; Kerrin Petty ’93, Nordic
1992 Joseph Holland ’90, Nordic combined; James Holland ’95, ski jumping; Brenda White ’89, Nordic
1994 Todd Boonstra ’89, Nordic; James Holland ’95, ski jumping; Laura Wilson ’91, Nordic
1998 John LeClair, men’s hockey; Laura Wilson ’91, Nordic
2002 Tessa Benoit ’01, Nordic; Kris Freeman, Nordic; Jay Hakkinen, biathlon; John LeClair, men’s hockey; Aaron Miller ’93, men’s hockey; Rachel Steer, biathlon; Dan Westover, biathlon
2006? Olympic rosters weren’t final as VQ went to press, but likely candidates include Lowell Bailey ’05, biathlon; Jimmy Cochran, Alpine; Kris Freeman, Nordic; Aaron Miller ’93, men’s hockey; and Martin St. Louis ’97, (Canada) men’s hockey
Getting in the games
1956
FIRST As Larry Damon ’55 points out his head (third from the wall) among many heads in a photo clipping of the opening ceremonies for the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, he reveals the true test of Olympic competition. “Standing there for hours and hours was the hardest, most disagreeable part,” he says.
As for the race, Damon flashes something between a smile and a wince, “I remember having a lot of butterflies. I went out like a terror, way too fast, even started to catch the Finnish guy who went before me…” In the end, it wouldn’t be the Burlington native’s best race, but it was a milestone for the University of Vermont, the first time an alumnus competed in the Winter Olympic Games. An NCAA champion skier during his college years, Damon competed in four Olympics as a skier or biathlete and his impressive running career included a tenth place finish in the Boston Marathon.
A veteran instructor at the Trapp Family Lodge Cross Country Ski Center (and a jazz trumpeter on the side), Damon is a modest, patient teacher for many clicking into skinny skis for the first time, unaware they’re about to learn the sport from a four-time Olympian.
1972
KICK When varsity skier Dave Hosmer ’66 G’68 and his buddies needed a ride down to Putney for a 50K cross country race, Dave’s girlfriend, Trina Barton G’68, agreed to drive and handle the chore of feeding the skiers mid-race. (This was 1966, pre-Power Bar, after all.) But once the competition started, the one-woman support crew found something more intriguing than the state of her future husband’s glycogen levels.
Watching skiers circle a half-mile loop, she began to truly fall for the sport in which she’d only dabbled. Soon she was out of the warm car, kicking and gliding in a bitter wind and loving it. “I was so captivated by the technique,” she says, “and almost 40 years later I’m still captivated by it. You know when you’re doing it right. It’s an unbelievable feeling.”
Before Title IX, when few women even went for a jog around the block, Trina Hosmer started to train hard as a runner and skier. She recalls running at night on the Burlington Country Club golf course to avoid becoming the spectacle of a woman running. The work paid off, earning her a place on two Olympic teams. She was among the pioneering athletes who skied in the 1972 Olympics, the first with women’s Nordic races.
The Hosmers, who recently moved to Stowe after Dave’s retirement from a distinguished career on the statistics faculty at the University of Massachusetts, are both going strong as competitive athletes. When a wet snow fell in October, Trina was quick to get out the skis. The conditions may have been lousy, but it was winter.
1972
GOLD In first place after the first slalom run at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, Barbara Ann Cochran ’78 knew she needed to calm down. Her lead over the next skier was a slim .03 seconds, and, as heavy snow fell on the course, the second run of the day loomed ahead.
She gave herself a pep talk. “No matter what happens, you won the first run at the Olympics and not many people can say that. If the French girls can win, you can win.” Then she thought of what her father, Mickey ’48, had said to her a year before between runs in a similar situation at the world championships.
“He had a nice grin, a little twinkle in his eye,” Barbara Ann recalls. “He said, ‘I always thought that you were the cool cucumber in the family.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess I am.’”
She skied to the Olympic gold medal that afternoon, February 12, 1972. Mickey was half-a-world away, watching the games on TV with wife Ginny ’50 in the Richmond farmhouse where they had raised four kids who would all hone their skiing on the hill out back and go on to the Olympics. Marilyn ’76 and Bobby ’76 MD ’81 were on the 1972 team with Barbara Ann. Lindy ’82 would compete for the U.S. team at the 1976 Innsbruck Games.
The Cochran family’s ski glory includes the Olympics and then some — world cups, national championships. The old family homestead is packed with trophies, plaques, mugs, cowbells, and keys to cities (New York and Richmond) with the Cochran name etched into them. Standing in the midst of it all, Barbara Ann reflects, “I don’t think my dad had any idea that we’d all turn out to be Olympic skiers. He just wanted us to learn the lesson that to do well in something you had to train at it.”
1984
AIR If you remember one image from the intro to “ABC’s Wide World of Sports,” it is Yugoslavia’s Vinko Bogataj (AKA “Mr. Agony of Defeat”) tumbling down the take-off in a ski jump gone badly wrong.
So how does a 10-year-old kid watch that and decide to give it a go?
Michael Holland ’92 recalls his first jump, circa 1971. “I was quite scared. That take-off looks like a sheer cliff,” he says and laughs. “But it’s a leap of faith, it’s just a leap of faith.” The jumps don’t necessarily get any easier, they just get longer, including Holland’s 610-foot ski flying world record in 1985. (That’s six seconds of hang time at 70 mph.)
Holland’s younger brothers, Joe ’90 and Jim ’95, took the same leaps of faith and each of the Hollands retired with two Olympic Games on his jumping resume. Big brother Mike quickly puts any talk of sibling rivalry to rest. “We were a team within a team,” he says, “bringing ourselves up to beat others.”
2002
SURREAL Given the international nature of the league, there’s no shortage of National Hockey League all-stars on the rosters of Olympic teams from around the world. For the NHL’s top players, teammates become opponents and opponents become teammates — almost overnight — when the Olympics roll around. “You’re playing a pro game just a few days before and then you’re in the Olympics,” says Aaron Miller ’93, defenseman for the Los Angeles Kings. “It’s kind of surreal.”
(for UVM staff)