Canmore Kicks Off A Key Pre-Paralympic Season For U.S. Nordic Skiers

Members of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team will spend the month of November in Canmore, Alberta, getting in as much time on snow as possible to start the Para Nordic skiing season.

They’ll train in Canmore for what’s expected to be an intriguing season for the nation’s top sit skiers, standing skiers and visually impaired skiers. They can get excited at the thought that the Winter Paralympic Games Milano Cortina 2026 are less than 500 days away.

At the same time, the athletes know they still have more than a year to get faster, make adjustments to their ski equipment and mentally prepare for the next Winter Paralympics by competing against world-class talent in Europe.

“Some athletes are very focused on the 2026 Games, but most are focused on the bigger picture of using this season as an opportunity to improve,” said Eileen Carey, director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. “All athletes have specific goals regardless of their level, so we spend our time focusing on those goals.

“Some athletes may need to improve by 0.25 percent to reach their goals, and others by 50 percent, but the result of what they are doing day-to-day is pretty similar.”

A large group of Paralympians, Paralympic hopefuls and development athletes will compete for the first time this winter at a pair of Continental Cup races sanctioned by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) on Nov. 20-21 in Alberta.

A month later, a smaller group of top American Para Nordic skiers will travel overseas and race in Vuokatti, Finland, for the first world cup event of the season and the final major competition of the year.

It has been a quick turnaround for sit skiers Oksana Masters, Kendall Gretsch and Aaron Pike to get ready for the upcoming season. That’s because, as it turned out, this was a Paralympic year for the three highly decorated athletes who compete in both summer and winter sports.

Masters, Gretsch and Pike raced at the 2024 Paris Paralympics this past summer.

In Paris, Masters defended the two cycling gold medals she won three years ago at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, giving her a total of 19 Paralympic medals in Nordic skiing, cycling and rowing. She’s the most decorated U.S. Winter Paralympian of all time.

Gretsch, a seven-time Paralympic medalist, earned a silver medal in the triathlon. Pike, meanwhile, placed seventh in the marathon and earned a pair of top-15 finishes in track and field at the Paris Paralympics, joining his fiancée Masters as a seven-time Paralympian.

“Every athlete has had a different path in the offseason, and they really drive (what they focused on),” Carey said. “For some, it was competing and working for a medal in the Summer Paralympics. For others, it might have been a lot of technical training or trying something new in the weight room.

“At this point of the season, we are not putting a lot of stock into performances and just trying to continue to make the incremental improvements that lead to athletes achieving their goals.”

To that point, two-time Paralympian Dani Aravich, another member of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team, has been working her way back into shape after being diagnosed with mononucleosis. She’s joined on the national team by Paralympic gold medalists Dan Cnossen (sit skiing), Jake Adicoff (visually impaired skiing) and Sydney Peterson (standing skiing).

After opening the world cup schedule in Finland, the top American skiers will compete in late January and early February at a world cup in Val di Fiemme, Italy. It’ll give them the opportunity to race and get more accustomed to the venue where the Nordic skiing events will be held during the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics.

With no Winter Paralympics on the calendar, Carey said the team’s marquee events this season will be several world championships. There biathlon world championships are in Pokljuka, Slovenia, from Feb. 4-9, followed by the cross-country skiing world championships in Toblach, Italy, a few days later.

“We have a great season of racing scheduled,” Carey said.

In addition, Carey said she’s excited about a unique competition toward the end of the season, in which the FIS cross-country skiing world championships will be combined with the Para Nordic skiing sprint world championships in Trondheim, Norway, from March 4-5,

“It will be fun to be with our USA teammates on the Olympic side of the sport as one team for that event,” Carey said. “We don’t usually get that opportunity and that should be a highlight of the season.”

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.