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Bashing Gates on Bended Knee

By Beacon Staff

Kelsey Schmid-Sommer, the four-time women’s U.S. national telemark ski racing champion, prefers to start training for the season in the fall. But last year an event disrupted her plans: In October, she gave birth to a son.

And while she is overjoyed at becoming a new mother, the 33-year-old admits it had made the challenge of training to defend her title at the upcoming national championships – scheduled to begin at Whitefish Mountain Resort March 18 – a bit tougher.

“I’m definitely more humble this year, after having a baby, trying to work with what I’ve got,” Schmid-Sommer said. “This used to be pretty darn easy for me; right now I’m giving it all I’ve got.”

Telemark skiing, where the heel is not locked down in the binding and turns require a lunging motion, is a resurgent offshoot of downhill skiing that actually harkens back to the sport’s origins in Norway. But achieving the balance and strength to make sustained telemark turns down a slope, at speed, can be difficult for even accomplished skiers. On top of that, “classic” telemark races include the slalom gates and jumps of alpine skiing courses, coupled with uphill and skating sections. Judges stationed at each gate penalize racers for lapses in telemark form.

All of which means Schmid-Sommer has had to work very hard in preparation for going up against some of the top telemark skiers in the country next month. She’s been running gates at least twice a week with a group of telemark skiers comprised of those aspiring to make the U.S. national team, as well as former world-class racers emerging from retirement due to nationals being held in their backyard.

The group skate-skies several times a week and Schmid-Sommer has been hitting the gym with a trainer as she works on rebuilding muscle and losing weight from her recent pregnancy. Despite that, she said she feels “back on track again,” though her endurance level might not be as high as usual for this time of year.

“The skiing, I seem to just bounce back into things faster than I thought,” she said. “It’s just the skating and the gym work that I’m feeling.”

But any apparent slowdown Schmid-Sommer may notice within herself certainly wasn’t evident during a recent morning practice on Big Mountain. The group gathered early to set the gates on the Slalom course under skies alternating between brilliant sunshine and driving snow.

Former U.S. National Telemark team members Reid Sabin, who won the World Cup in 2000 and 2001, and Glenn Gustafson, who also placed in races around the world, skied alongside relative newcomers hoping to make the team based on their performance in next month’s competition. The skiers rely on each other for motivation and feedback; there are no coaches.

“There never has been: We’re all for one, one for all,” Schmid-Sommer said. “We love to get tips from the veterans like Reid and Glenn; we’re always asking them questions.”

The varying experience levels came through in how the racers attacked the course, with Sabin and Gustafson bashing through the gates at a blistering pace, while the younger skiers took the turns slightly wider.

Schmid-Sommer’s skiing, however, falls somewhere in between. Even on a racecourse, she maintains the classic drop-knee form and fluid grace that draws so many to telemark. But admiring her technique almost allows one to miss that she is skiing with lethal quickness. Attempting to keep up with her for a run or two, this reporter found, was nearly impossible.

A native of Franconia, N.H., Schmid-Sommer grew up alpine racing. She began telemarking while attending college in Missoula in the mid-1990s, when the free-heel renaissance was beginning to hit its stride. But she was focused on powder, not racing. In 2001 she moved to Whitefish, which at that time was a hub for many of the best telemark skiers in the country.

In 2005, Schmid-Sommer returned to racing, but this time on telemark skis, competing locally in the Thursday Night Race League. The following year she won the U.S. National Telemark Championship. And she has won it every year since.

Telemark races are slower than their alpine counterparts, but not by much, and the varied nature of the racecourses is part of what appeals to Schmid-Sommer.

“I think it’s more fun, more exciting and definitely more challenging,” she said. “Because of that, when you come through the finish line, it’s definitely more rewarding.”

Though Schmid-Sommer has local and national sponsors, the U.S. Telemark Ski Association is a nonprofit and the sport, as a whole, lacks many big name sponsors, due in part to the as-yet-unsuccessful campaign to get telemark ski racing accepted into the Olympics.

But that aspect also contributes to the fellowship telemark skiers feel for one another. The National Championships in March have divisions open to racers of all abilities, and Schmid-Sommer hopes the Flathead telemark community will turn out to celebrate their sport.

“Whitefish Mountain is known for their great telemark skiers,” she said. “So many of them rip, so we’d love to have them come out and have some fun.”