Olympic Biathletes Dunklee, Egan Get A Crash Course In Coaching Para Skiers

A few years ago, Susan Dunklee was wrapping up a training session in Bend, Oregon, when she was asked if she wanted to serve as a guide for a visually impaired skier during a race.

Dunklee didn’t have experience as a guide, but the three-time Olympian in biathlon agreed to do it because another guide was needed at the last minute. She joked it was a “crash course in guiding” for her.

Clare Egan, a two-time Olympian and Dunklee’s former teammate on the U.S. biathlon team, thought it would be fun to work with a visually impaired skier as well.

“I thought it would be a really cool thing to try, just a different way to enjoy the sport that I love, which is cross-country skiing,” Egan said. “And to compete as a team, I thought, would be really, really cool because a guide and an athlete work as one basically.”

Dunklee and Egan have welcomed opportunities to coach Para athletes since they both retired from biathlon following the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. In November, they were invited to spend a week coaching at a training camp that U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing hosted in Canmore, Alberta.

It was a fun learning experience for the two Olympians. They worked with a group of Para athletes who are relatively new to cross-country skiing.

Dunklee coached the standing skiers, while Egan served as a guide for promising visually impaired skier Liza Corso. Along the way, the Olympians shared wisdom that they had gained during their highly decorated careers with the developing athletes.

“I think developing athletes is a really interesting realm to coach in because you can make such a big difference in the trajectory of somebody’s career by giving them some tools at a time when they really are interested in learning more tools in sport and in finding more opportunities,” Dunklee said.

“I think working in Para (sports) especially is interesting, too, because there’s so much more individualization and so much more creativity needed.”

Dunklee and Egan were invited to help out in Canmore thanks to their friendship with another former biathlete.

BethAnn Chamberlain, a development coach for U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing, was once Dunklee’s teammate on the U.S. biathlon team. They’ve remained in touch over the years, and they often crossed paths when Dunklee was still competing and trained at the same locations as the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing teams.

Chamberlain knew Dunklee was interested in working with Para Nordic skiers after she retired. Last winter, Chamberlain helped the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in northern Vermont — where Dunklee now works — host a camp for visually impaired skiers.

While spending the week together in Canmore, Dunklee said she was “constantly trying to pick” Chamberlain’s brain to figure out the best drills to use to help teach standing skiers with different physical impairments.

“I’m still learning how to coach skiing, just straight-up skiing,” Dunklee said. “I’ve been an athlete for a long time, but coaching is totally different skill sets, and figuring out drills that work for learning weight shift can be really tricky when you have balance issues.”

Egan, meanwhile, spent the first few days of the training camp coaching standing skiers with Dunklee until Corso arrived.

As a track and field athlete, Corso earned a silver medal in the women’s 1,500-meter race at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. She joined the other Para Nordic skiers in Canmore as soon as she wrapped up her junior season with the Lipscomb women’s cross country team.

“I picked her up from the airport, so we did have some time to talk,” Egan said. “That was also a really good time for us to get to know each other a little bit before diving in on skis.”

With Egan skiing alongside her, Corso competed in a 5-kilometer race and a 10K race at the training camp. Egan gave verbal cues during the races to help Corso understand what the terrain looked like and if they were approaching an uphill or downhill portion of the course.

Egan said it was “cool” to see what they learned from the first day of racing together and then apply it the following day. They also talked during their free time about how Corso’s background as a distance runner will help with her skiing.

“I relate so much to Liza because I was also a runner. That’s how my athletic career started, and I transitioned into cross-country skiing in my teens and then eventually into biathlon in my mid-20s,” Egan said. “But I remember going through the sort of development phase that Liza is in right now where she has an amazing athletic capacity and she’s in amazing shape.”

Dunklee said Michael Kneeland, a teenager from Bozeman, Montana, regularly hung out with the coaches during breakfast in Canmore. He’s new to sit skiing, and he was curious to learn more about the sport from Dunklee and the other coaches. Kneeland made his world cup debut for Team USA last month in Europe.

“He had so many questions, so much curiosity about the sport, about college, about skiing in college, about this, about that,” Dunklee said. “He just really had thought-provoking questions that challenged us in a lot of ways to come up with good answers to, but it was fun.”

Dunklee and Egan each expressed an interest in continuing to work with Para Nordic skiers — assuming they can fit it into all the other commitments they’ve picked up during their retirement.

“I think it just shows what kind of high-performance team they are (at U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing) that they reached out to both Susan and I knowing we were recently retired, knowing that we’re still involved in sport, and invited us and asked us to come be a part of their programs,” Egan said. “That means a lot to us. It means a lot that they recognized my expertise, so I was grateful to be asked.

“I love coaching and working with young people, especially this kind of development-level athlete. So yeah, I’d do it anytime I can.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordicSkiing.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.