A Year After ‘New And Scary,’ Nicole Zaino Left This Year’s Nationals Feeling Confident, Excited

Nicole Zaino was in a good mood as she waited at the starting line before each of her races at the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships in Midway, Utah.

Instead of worrying about her races, she listened to the music playing over the speakers at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center and started dancing on the snow.

It was an indication of just how relaxed Zaino felt competing in three races over four days at the national championships, which ran from Jan. 2-5. She was having a great time and enjoying herself.

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“I felt confident in my skiing and confident in my plan, so I was just trying to be excited and enjoy the process. And I was definitely more confident,” she said. “I was relaxed but might have had some nerves on some of the days this (past) week.”

Zaino, who suffered a stroke at age 8, is a newcomer to sit skiing. She fell in love with the sport after trying it for the first time in February of 2022, and she has looked for opportunities to train and get better at it since then.

The cross-country ski nationals — in which standing and visually impaired skiers were integrated into the able-bodied competition, while sit skiers will competed in their own races — gave Zaino a chance to test herself while competing against some of the world’s fastest sit skiers, including Paralympic gold medalists Oksana Masters and Kendall Gretsch.

She was also able to see where she has improved the most since competing at the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Sit Ski Nationals at Soldier Hollow last January. That was her first time ever taking part in a Para Nordic skiing race, and she admitted everything was “new and scary” at the time.

Things felt much more comfortable for her this time around.

“I definitely left nationals at Soldier Hollow feeling proud of how much I progressed and how I was getting closer and closer and faster,” said Zaino, who graduated in June with a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington.

“But just like all sports like this and (with) my analytical mindset, I was like, I already have a list of things that went well and things that I want to improve, so that I can continue to try to improve.”

Zaino placed fourth in the women’s 5-kilometer race on Jan. 2, posting a time of 21 minutes, 1.7 seconds. She finished behind only Masters, Gretsch and Erin Martin, who made her Paralympic debut at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

It wasn’t the first time Zaino raced against the top American sit skiers this season. In November, she participated in a training camp and a series of races with members of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national and development teams in Canmore, Alberta.

A day after finishing fourth in the 5K race in Utah, Zaino was the only non-Paralympian to advance to the finals of the sit ski sprint. The event featured both male and female athletes.

Zaino was joined in the finals by Masters, Gretsch, Paralympic gold medalists Dan Cnossen and Josh Sweeney (in sled hockey), as well as six-time Paralympian Aaron Pike. Zaino placed sixth with a time of 4:27.91.

Masters, who missed last season because of an injury to her left hand, continued her comeback by winning the sprint at 3:32.54.

“Making it to the finals for the sprint, that was really exciting and I was super proud of myself for being able to do that,” Zaino said. “And then going at the start in the final for the sprint, it was six of us. It was me and five Paralympians.

“But yeah, it felt really good to be able to like close the gap between my times and their times compared to Canmore, compared to last year, and really try to get up close to their times and try to push them. So we’ll see how it continues to progress, but I definitely left feeling happy with how my results shook out.”

Zaino capped her performance at nationals by taking seventh in the 10K race on Jan. 5. She finished behind six Paralympians, at 37:15.4.

Masters won the 10K race with a time of 28:09.8 to earn her third victory of the week.

Zaino said she has improved her endurance and gotten better with her ski technique over the past year. That was evident in how much easier it was for her to get up hills and ski down them than a year ago when she was competing at the sit ski nationals at Soldier Hollow.

As soon as this year’s nationals ended, Zaino returned to her new home in Bozeman, Montana, where U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing is based. She said she’ll spend the next month training before she competes in the Ski to the Sun Marathon and Relay on Feb. 10 in the Methow Valley in northern Washington.

“I had some things click with my technique in December,” Zaino said, “and so being able to apply that this (past) week at races, at race pace and all of those things, it was really exciting to see.”

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.