Retiring skier prepares for a different type of moguls

Second-place Hannah Kearney stands on the podium following the women's freestyle skiing World Cup dual moguls on Jan 10 in Park City, Utah. [Photo/Agencies]

On a dais with eight other members of the US national ski and snowboarding team, Hannah Kearney, owner of Olympic gold and bronze medals in freestyle moguls, was asked last week if a recent World Cup victory - the 43rd of her career - gave her reason to reconsider her retirement at season's end.

"Of course, that feeling when you cross the finish line knowing you have skied well certainly is motivating," Kearney said. "It certainly makes you want to continue, but you have to have faith that there will be some other way to get that feeling in your life."

The other national team members listened intently to Kearney's answer, their necks craned in her direction. When she was finished, one blurted out, "How about peer pressure?"

In a way, peer pressure has contributed to Kearney's decision to retire in March. At 28, she has grown antsy watching her nonskiing friends secure the second or third jobs of their careers or their third degrees while she contemplates her second year of college.

After Kearney won the women's mogul event at the 2010 Olympics, one of her equipment sponsors told The Valley News of West Lebanon, N.H., "That gold medal is going to set her up for life."

Five years later, Kearney wishes she had a dollar for every time someone told her that being an Olympic champion means never having to worry about her future. If that were so, she might have enough money to pay her college tuition for one semester.

"At the very least, I'd be able to buy a really nice dinner," she said, laughing.

Contrary to the public perception, the path to Easy Street is not paved in Olympic gold. One can build a blue-chip rsum, as has Kearney, a three-time Olympian who won a bronze last year in Sochi in her title defense, and not have many job prospects.

"The downside of being an Olympic athlete is you finish your career and you have no work experience," she said. "You're going to be out there competing for jobs with people who have a 10-year head start."

The quandary for Kearney and her fellow national team members is that the further they advance in their sports, the more they fall behind in the classroom. The international racing season overlaps with the fall and winter academic terms, and the Americans spend most of that time outside the United States.

In the spring of 2011, Kearney began taking classes at Dartmouth, across the Connecticut River from her hometown, Norwich, Vermont. She has only completed enough courses to be considered a sophomore.

With her pipeline of prize money and endorsement income about to dry up, she will not be able to afford the Ivy League tuition. Her plan is to enroll in May as a full-time student at Salt Lake City's Westminster College, which has a partnership with the US Ski and Snowboard Association to provide tuition grants to national team members.

To ease its athletes' post-career transition, the USSA several years ago started a tuition assistance program with money provided by two donors, Erik Borgen and Jim Swartz.

Luke Bodensteiner, the association's executive vice-president for athletics, said: "It's a pretty significant challenge that doesn't get talked about a lot. The perception is that these athletes in the Olympics have got it made. It might be a case for a handful, but the reality is, very few of them make money."

In 2012, Bodensteiner, a two-time Olympian, chaired a committee that presented the US Olympic Committee with a 26-page report on developing career, education and life-skill pipelines for elite athletes. The report stated that a holistic approach for developing national team members is "ethically and morally the right thing to do."

Kearney agreed, saying: "You don't want to be like, 'You owe me something' because they've given us funding, they've given us treatment and coaches. So how can we ask more of them? But I think it's mutually beneficial because, as we leave the ski team, we're forever Olympians, we'll forever be representing them, so it'd be better if we're successful in our futures."

Kearney knows she could continue to ski at a high level for another season or two. She is second in the World Cup points standings, and this week she will travel to Austria to compete for her third world championship.

Just because she can compete at a high level, though, does it mean she should? The competitor in Kearney, who constantly pushed the boundaries of performance in her sport, knows the magic starts where one's comfort zone ends.

"If you continue doing something you've done for such a long time, you can't really grow in other ways," Kearney said. "At this point, while I almost don't want to, I know I need to, and the only way I'll be able to do that is free up all this time I've been putting into skiing and put that time into growing as a person."

She added: "It's kind of exciting that I might have this energy to put into something else. The thing that makes me nervous is not knowing what that thing is."

Kearney has a few ideas. She is comfortable and eloquent in front of the camera, making television work a consideration. Also, as she guides her younger teammates through their weight workouts, it has occurred to Kearney that she might like being a personal trainer.

"Maybe strength and conditioning combined with nutrition," she said.

New York Times