Tunnel Vision: Adicoff And Peterson Get Their Summer Reps Underground In Sweden

Paralympic gold medalists Jake Adicoff and Sydney Peterson didn’t need to worry about inclement weather or poor snow conditions as they trained in Torsby, Sweden, earlier this month.

That’s because the conditions were always the same inside the underground snow tunnel where Adicoff and Peterson skied for a couple of hours every morning. They were able to get on snow and work on their ski technique regardless of what the weather was like outdoors.

Adicoff and Peterson are members of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team. They combined to help Team USA win its first-ever gold medal in the cross-country skiing mixed relay race at the Paralympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

While other members of the U.S. team were training domestically this month, including several athletes who are preparing to compete in their summer sports at the Paris Paralympics, Adicoff and Peterson skied alongside each other in Torsby.

They took part in a training camp hosted by U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing for standing skiers from July 8-17. They were joined by Peter Wolter, who serves as a personal guide for Adicoff, who’s visually impaired.

“Our athletes’ offseason is long, and our sport is very technical. Having the chance to train on snow during the offseason has really large benefits to skill acquisition and motivation,” said Nick Michaud, a U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing coach who worked with Adicoff and Peterson in Sweden.

“Our athletes love skiing and have really big goals. We have really solid dryland training practices, but it is hard to compare anything to the feeling of sliding around on snow. I think getting on snow is equally as important for working on very technical movement adjustments as it is for maintaining a high level of motivation during long training years.”

U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing has hosted offseason training camps at the ski tunnel in Torsby over the past decade, often with sit skiers training there in the fall. The ski tunnel is 1.3 kilometers long, and since it’s refrigerated, it allows for skiing year-round.

“In the past, we have often overlapped with other world cup skiers, but during this trip, the tunnel was pretty empty,” Michaud said. “The upside of this was that it was easier to work on technique with less traffic.”

Michaud said Adicoff and Peterson had the opportunity to focus on different aspects while training for more than a week inside the controlled environment.

Peterson, who won a gold, silver and bronze medal during her Paralympic debut two years ago in Beijing, tried out different ankle foot orthotics that are necessary for her to wear to ski well while doing laps inside the ski tunnel.

“There is no exact science (with ankle foot orthotics), and sometimes our solutions that work on roller skis do not work on snow. This provided us a chance to see how prototypes are doing and what adjustments need to be made in the fall,” Michaud said. “She was also working on different gears for the fastest and most efficient one-pole skiing. We experimented with a lot of different styles and transitions to keep adapting her gearing through different terrain to how her body moves best.”

Adicoff, meanwhile, worked with Wolter on getting their timing down together. As a personal guide, Wolter will ski ahead of Adicoff during races and communicate to the four-time Paralympic medalist as to what he’s approaching on the course.

Adicoff and Wolter have been training this summer in Oslo, Norway, so they didn’t need to travel to far to reach the ski tunnel in Torsby.

“They have been really great training partners for each other, but guiding can be a little different than training together,” Michaud said. “We worked on every little gear transition in the tunnel, with Peter leading as they would be doing in a race. One of the goals is to ski really close to the guide in front of you, so having the chance to practice this on classic skis — which are much longer than roller skis — is really beneficial.”

While in Sweden, Adicoff and Peterson spent every morning doing intensity training and technique work inside the ski tunnel. They then lifted weights, ran, roller skied or did more training inside the ski tunnel in the afternoons.

“The snow itself is really quite similar to skiing outside in the winter,” Michaud said of the conditions inside the ski tunnel. “This is really an incredible resource to have access to, which is a reason we keep going back.”

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 USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.