From 2011 to 2014, Sylvan Ellefson, based out of Edwards, Colorado, was on a roar. SuperTour wins, World Cup starts, and a 30-kilometer skate national championship in 2014. Now, at 31 years old, it seems the skier who began his ascent in the sport during high school would rather focus on being a husband, father, brother, and coach rather than draw attention to himself. Based as a business person in Colorado’s Vail Valley, Ellefson is giving back to the community that helped support his dreams. Along with his brother Kjell and friend John Cummins, the three have begun the Fjellbarn Fund. For those non-Norwegian speakers out there, Fjellbarn is Norwegian for “mountain child”.
Sylvan Ellefson giving his son Ryder some air time. (Photo: Kjell Ellefson)
The new nonprofit based near Vail is dedicated to helping athletes from families in need pursue their athletic dreams.
Sylvan Ellefson on the World Cup. (Photo: Reese Hanneman)
Our conversation with Ellefson was recorded on Sept. 10. Along with learning about the inspiration for his nonprofit work, we’ll get some insight into how Ellefson’s ski career informs his coaching with the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail.
Cal Deline (Dartmouth Ski Team) racing to 17th in the men’s 15 k freestyle at 2017 U.S. nationals earlier this month at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Courtesy photo)
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at next week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 21-year-old Cal Deline, of Dartmouth College, who’s representing the U.S. at his first U23 Worlds.
***
“My full name is Callan Deline, but people call me Cal.
I was born in Fort Collins, Colo., raised in Vail, Colo., and one thing that you should know about Vail is that it’s awesome all summer and winter long.
Cal Deline (Dartmouth Ski Team) finishing 14th in the 10 k freestyle at 2016 NCAA Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colo. (Courtesy photo)
I started cross-country skiing when I was 15, thanks to Dan Weiland, Sylvan Ellefson, and being forced to stop big mountain skiing. I currently train where I go to school, in Hanover, N.H., with the Dartmouth Ski Team.
If I’m not nordic skiing you can probably find me alpine skiing or somewhere at school. My favorite book is ‘Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hours Bookstore‘.
One of the things I’m most excited about for U23/Junior Worlds at Soldier Hollow is to be racing against some of the worlds best on what I consider a home course. As for the races I’m targeting, I’m going for all of them, but am especially excited for the 30 k pursuit. It’ll be my first-ever pursuit and second-ever 30 k (first 30 k being at nationals this year).
The best advice anyone ever gave me about skiing or racing was, there’s a tie … ‘90% of skiing fast is looking good’ – Simi Hamilton… ‘Racing is just hanging onto the fastest guy for as long as you can, until one day you are the fastest guy’ – Sylvan Ellefson
One of the best race memories I have is drinking Red Bulls instead of warming up before the Owl Creek Chase, or before any race longer than 20 k.
If I could meet one World Cup skier, it would be Jessie Diggins.
If I don’t end up being a professional skier, I’ll probably be traveling or trying to find a real job.
I’m missing a week and a half of school to be here, and my professors are probably thinking ‘Who is gonna take this kid’s midterms?‘
Ski & Snowboard Club Vail skiers (l to r) Gracie Shanley, Annie Blakslee and Lyle Shipp at Pitkin Lake above East Vail in the Gore. (Photo: Eric Pepper)
Five years ago, five ski buddies got together and founded Team HomeGrown. The idea back then, according to Sylvan Ellefson, was to create a sort of all-comers club.
Kevin Hochtl, Josh Smith, Paul Gorbold, Dan Weiland, and Ellefson had all grown up around Vail, Colo., and this was a “homegrown” team they could lay claim to, no matter what stage of life or what stage of their ski career they were in.
“We also wanted to provide a sort of support to the young kids growing up in the sport in the valley,” Ellefson explained. “Being able to look up to somebody, whether it is work or sport, is a very important part of keeping someone engaged in it. That was our belief.”
Sylvan Ellefson representing Team HomeGrown/SSCV last season at U.S. nationals in Midway, Utah. (Photo: Bert Boyer/http://bertboyer.zenfolio.com/) Proceeds from photo sales directly donated to NNF.
Two years later in 2011, HomeGrown — the elite offshoot of Ski & Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV) — reached a new level with the addition of then-U.S. Ski Team members Noah Hoffman, from Aspen (still on the team), and Tad Elliott, from Durango.
In 2012, Ryan Scott, a Montana State University grad from Boulder, came on as a sixth member with Ellefson, Hoffman, Elliott, and postgrads Christian Shanley (from Vail) and Max Scrimgeour (Steamboat Springs).
“It became more of a Team Colorado, but still homegrown in the sense that we all grew up racing each other every weekend through middle school and high school,” Ellefson wrote in an email. “Racing ‘as a team,’ at Junior Nationals really gave a sense of unity. From that point, we wanted to help inspire the next generation of nordic skiers in the state of Colorado. Help them realize that nordic skiing can become a career, and if anything more, a way to develop an amazing tolerance for pain, mental strength, and an iron-clad work ethic.”
This spring, Ellefson, 27, retired from skiing after making a run for the 2014 Olympics. Scott returned to Boulder full time to network and make a living in graphic design and web development.
In a phone interview last month, Scott said he’d been training when he could, despite revving up to 30- to 40-hour work weeks by fall. Since parting ways with SSCV in the middle of last winter, he wasn’t sure what he’d do for support this season.
“I might be figuring it out last minute, or racing independent and racing for Madshus,” Scott said.
Neither Scott nor SSCV Head Coach Eric Pepper chose to elaborate on why Scott left the team.
“I wasn’t involved in that conversation too much,” Pepper said.
Despite battling mononucleosis symptoms as early as last October, Elliott was cleared to race in November and got in two distance starts in West Yellowstone, Mont., and Sovereign Lake, B.C. He placed 14th in B.C. (one place higher than his finish in West Yellowstone), then returned home to Durango, where a doctor diagnosed Elliott with the Epstein-Barr virus — best known as the cause of infectious mono.
Tad Elliott (l) and Sylvan Ellefson (8) of Team HomeGrown/SSCV make their way up the last hill almost halfway through the 30 k freestyle mass start at 2014 U.S. nationals. Ellefson won and Elliott did not finish.
In January, he flew to Park City, Utah, to give the 30-kilometer skate mass start at U.S. nationals his best shot, but he didn’t finish.
“I then took from January until July off of any training,” Elliott wrote in an email. “Really light training in August now a bit more structured training into the ski season.”
Elliott, 26, is making a comeback this season, although he’s not sure how strong he’ll be.
“The doctor who finally diagnosed me was nervous I wouldn’t be able to race again for a really long time,” he explained. “So being out 7 months off of my feet has been really small. I might not get back 100 percent, so there is really no expectations or goals I have to hit. I am coming back because I love skiing especially for Team HomeGrown, and Salomon, Honey Stinger, Caldwell Sport and Oakley. Without them saying get well and we will see you when you are ready, I probably would have retired from racing.”
“I might not get back 100 percent, so there is really no expectations or goals I have to hit. I am coming back because I love skiing.” — Tad Elliott, SSCV Elite member
During his recovery last winter, Elliott coached Durango Nordic juniors once a week.
“That was all I could manage I felt so terrible,” he wrote.
He worked for Salomon Running this spring and summer, and at a Durango mountain-bike shop called Mountain Bike Specialists, where his employers where empathetic and let him rest whenever he needed to.
“All of my sponsors have stayed the same and showed their unconditional support,” Elliott explained. “My support team has stayed the exact same, and a piece of that has always been [coach] Zach Caldwell. We are using Firstbeat training systems in joint with my Suunto [heart-rate monitor] to track my heart rate variability to see how I am responding.”
On Oct. 8, Elliott wrote on Facebook that he had been cleared to train.
Out with the Old, In with SSCV Elite
This season, Elliott will be one of two seniors on the SSCV Elite team — Hoffman being the other.
Hannah Hardenbergh leading a high-school race last December in Colorado. (Photo: SSCV)
Hannah Hardenbergh and Cameron Bobb joined the squad as its two postgrads, and for the time being, HomeGrown is no more.
“We always knew that model is not sustainable if we want to grow the program,” Pepper said on the phone in early October.
Compared to the last two years, Vail’s top-tier nordic team has downsized, and SSCV’s emphasis has shifted to local junior programming. In the grand scheme of things, developing younger skiers is what will make its program thrive, Pepper said.
“We had talked to a number of potential people in the spring and what we really decided was we wanted to stay with who we had and not expand upon that this year,” he said. “Last year was obviously a really big push with Sylvan, being away from junior programing and athletes and families here, and with him not being in the mix anymore, and with Noah really needing minimal support from us, and Tad kind of coming back and seeing where he’s going to be at, it didn’t seem like there was a need for us to really pursue it this year.”
A year-round world traveler, Hoffman stops by Vail a few times each year when he can — most recently working out with the SSCV juniors and Summit Nordic Ski Club earlier this week. Like Elliott, Hoffman also works with personal coach Zach Caldwell.
Pepper has been Team HomeGrown’s coach for the last two seasons; Weiland, the longtime nordic program director at SSCV, coached the first two years before that.
Ellefson said Weiland, Pepper and assistant coach Lenka Sterling essentially waived all coaching fees and worked pro bono for HomeGrown from the beginning.
“I think they saw the potential of being coaches for what had the potential to be one of the best clubs in the nations, which I believe, to a degree we were one of the most competitive clubs, at a least in the men’s division,” Ellefson added. “They had full coaching schedules with the development team, high-school team and club team, so for Eric and Dan to even come out to our training sessions in the summer every single day was pretty instrumental.”
When HomeGrown started in 2009, it was “basically unfunded” for the first year, Ellefson said. The five original team members scraped money together — from savings, their parents and personal sponsors — to self fund.
The next year was better. The Rocky Mountain Nordic Angel nonprofit, which preceded HomeGrown, continued to supplement the team, and SSCV extended its support. The club initially let HomeGrown use its facilities, and by the next year, it granted its two athletes — Ellefson and Gorbold — access to additional training facilities and blew manmade snow for them in November. In 2011, Hoffman and Elliott came onboard to extend HomeGrown’s appeal to broader Colorado.
“To grow the culture in nordic skiing is way bigger than just trying to keep growing team HomeGrown,” Ellefson said. “If you grow the culture, I think the team will grow.”
“To grow the culture in nordic skiing is way bigger than just trying to keep growing team HomeGrown.” — Sylvan Ellefson, one of Team HomeGrown’s founders and SSCV Nordic Future Stars Head Coach
That’s why he wasn’t disappointed to see the name go. Above all, he wanted to see a team that enticed athletes after high school or college to pursue a professional career in ski racing.
“We are also moving more into how to fund these athletes better, and that we can do with the growth of the sport as a whole in the United States,” explained Ellefson, now a part-time coach for SSCV’s nordic future stars program (responsible for 40 to 60 kids ages 6 to 11) and vice president of sales and marketing at Cirque Mountain Apparel.
Noah Hoffman racing to second in the 2014 U.S. Distance Nationals 50 k classic mass start at Hillside trails in Anchorage, Alaska.
“To this point we had all athletes that grew up in Colorado,” Pepper said of HomeGrown’s recruiting pool. “Most of the kids that came to us this year were ones we had an interest in and relationship with, but they weren’t Colorado kids.”
That’s where SSCV had to make a decision. Ultimately, it resolved to focus on developing Colorado juniors rather than open HomeGrown to top skiers across the U.S., like several other elite teams do.
Ten years ago, Pepper estimated SSCV had 10 total athletes.
“Five years ago, it probably had 25 kids and now this year, it’ll probably be close to 80 with all our age groups,” he said. “[We’re] trying to establish a culture and improve trails … We have a ski academy now.”
Vail Ski & Snowboard Academy, founded in 2007. (Photo: SSCV)
The Vail Ski & Snowboard Academy, a public school for grades 5 through 12, was founded in 2007 and has nordic, alpine, snowboard, freeski, and freestyle teams as well as NCAA college programs, with seven kilometers of cross-country trails right outside its doors.
This year, Vail’s two postgrads are from the area and decided to take a year off college. Hardenbergh deferred from Harvard, and Bobb grew up racing for the Summit County Nordic Club. Both are coming back from injury, Pepper said.
“Its unfortunate when a racer post-grads in the U.S., it seems to be the feeling of World Juniors or bust,” he said. “We’re de-emphasizing it a bit … trying to give them more experiences, like a [SuperTour in] Bozeman. Their schedule isn’t that different domestically than a top-level junior, with western early season races, nationals, local races, [and] junior nationals … then [we’ll] look at opportunities.”
SSCV did not go to Spring Series last year in Anchorage, opting for French and Swiss nationals (for the same price of a plane ticket to Alaska) instead. This season, Pepper predicted they’ll have a similar option for postgrads and seniors, depending how each athlete is doing.
2015 SuperTour Finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, is a much more feasible trip from Colorado, “but Europe’s pretty appealing, too,” he said.
Former postgrads Shanley and Scrimgeour are now entering their sophomore years skiing for Denver University and the University of Colorado-Boulder, respectively.
And in terms of Vail’s male-to-female ratio: “We probably have more females than males, which is an interesting flip,” Pepper said, alluding to HomeGrown’s all-male status for the last four years. “In our U16 and older program, we have more females, but it’s pretty close to 50/50. In our older guys’ program, that was mostly coincidence.”
The 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company team: partial partner Sylvan Ellefson (c) with owners Christian Avignon (l) and Ryan Thompson. (Photo: Slade Cogswell/970 Design)
If you see Sylvan Ellefson hoisting a glass of whiskey or bourbon at a farmer’s market this summer, don’t be alarmed. He hasn’t gone off the deep end since retiring from nordic racing earlier this spring; he’s just doing his job.
At the end of last season, the 27-year-old Ski and Snowboard Club Vail member and Team HomeGrown founder decided he was ready for a change. Born and raised in Vail, Colo., he wanted to stay there, but the income he was reaping as a professional skier wasn’t cutting it. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had been his carrot, enticing him over the last several years (and his career) to train harder, race faster and hopefully make the U.S. Olympic team.
Sylvan Ellefson (SSCV/Team HomeGrown) lining up for the 30 k at 2014 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: Swix)
But it didn’t happen.
The night before the 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals in January, a race which Ellefson considered his best shot at proving his stripes for the Olympic team, he wrote himself a letter, which he posted on Facebook when he announced his retirement on March 31.
“Skiing began on a whim,” it began. “A suggestion from Duncan as something I might be good at. … Here I am, a night out from the biggest race of my entire life. Have I put in enough work already to help get me bid to the 2014 Sochi Olympics? I have no idea…
“Success is such a subjective thing,” the note continued. “I have to do this for me. As much as I want to do this for everyone else, I have to remember that I am doing this for me because it is what I love. It is my passion.”
The next day, Ellefson remembered feeling completely relaxed lining up for the 30 k.
“I knew I was just out there doing what I loved to do,” he said on the phone from Vail last month.
He won the race by 2.8 seconds over Brian Gregg of Team Gregg/Madshus. It was his first national title.
Exactly two weeks later on Jan. 22, the U.S. Ski Team named its Olympic squad. Ellefson wasn’t on the list.
“I’ve never been so anxious my entire life for a phone call,” he recalled. “And then I didn’t get a phone call, I got an email, and then I returned the email with a phone call and I got another email back after that. I got so bummed out about it for a couple days. It took me to read that letter I had written to myself that night before the 30 k to really remember why I was doing it.”
Ellefson in the lead with just over 5 k remaining in the men’s 30 k freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals in Midway, Utah.
His had been so concerned with the end goal rather than the process, he said.
“The reason I skied for so many years is because it’s so fun and I’ve met so many good people, so many good friends,” he added. “… Then it caught back up with me again when I didn’t get selected to the Olympic team and I was so angry for a while and just sad, and just maybe 5 percent relieved that it was over.”
Ellefson took nearly a month off racing, resuming the SuperTour circuit in St. Paul, Minn., then the American Birkebeiner on Feb. 22, in which he placed 21st. As a mid-season SuperTour leader, he earned World Cup starts in March in Lahti, Finland, and Drammen and Oslo, Norway. In those four World Cup races, he posted a best result of 67th in the Drammen classic sprint.
“It was good for me to take a little time off after the Olympic selection,” he said. “It was good for me to do things I liked to do — I went skiing and I kind of stopped training for a while and I enjoyed my life here in Vail. I knew I was going to finish out the season as much as I could … I did want to ski a couple more World Cups just because the feeling of skiing a World Cup is pretty awesome. My results weren’t fantastic, but just to be over there and experiencing it was good for me to remind me, and now I miss it again.”
The Holmekollen 50 k classic mass start in Oslo was Ellefson’s last race. He didn’t finish, and when he began contemplating a trip to Anchorage, Alaska, for the final SuperTour races of the season, Ellefson knew he was ready to hang up his racing boards. Not for good, but for the time being.
“I chose this life path a long time ago,” he said. “Getting married and knowing that I wanted to live in Vail for the rest of my life, I kind of started realizing this year that in order to do that I had to make life more sustainable here. Unfortunately a skier’s income is hard to pay all the bills with so that kind of slapped me in the face, made me realize that maybe not necessarily an entire withdrawal from the sport, but putting it on the back burner a little bit was probably in the cards if I wanted to continue living here.”
In contention for an overall SuperTour podium for 2013/2014, he spoke with his coaches Eric Pepper and Dan Weiland about whether he should finish out the season in Alaska.
“That was kind of the point in which I was like, yeah I want to go to Spring Series because this is what I do at the end of every year — it’s fun, it’s the end-of-the-season races you get to be with all the people you’ve been racing with all year and have a good time afterwards,” Ellefson said. “Then I kind of had to get out of that mentality and think about whether it actually made sense.”
If he wasn’t planning on racing next season and wasn’t concerned with improving his SuperTour standing or International Ski Federation (FIS) point profile, it didn’t. And so he made his decision, and now it was time to get to another line of work.
“… I am a current 10th Mountain soldier who has multiple deployments to Afghanistan and I am extremely proud to contribute to your endeavor. You have paid tribute to the soldiers that have come before and forever persevered their legacy. Thank you and CLIMB TO GLORY!” — Ben Coon, a current 10th Mountain soldier based out of Fort Drum, N.Y., in an email to 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company. According to The Bourbon Review, Coon will probably be amongst the first to enjoy one of the original batches once they’re released this summer or fall.
After stepping back from skiing this spring, Ellefson took a job overseeing the property management and service department at his friend’s masonry company, Avignon Stone and Outdoor Living in Vail.
Sylvan Ellefson while picking up barrels recently in Indiana for the 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company. (Courtesy photo)
His days were long — often 7 to 7 — but Ellefson had an end in sight. He was already a partial partner with Christian Avignon, the owner, and Ryan Thompson, one of Ellefson’s high-school soccer coaches, but not in the masonry business.
Avignon and Thompson, who owns the West Side Cafe in Vail, had been working on creating a craft distillery — the 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company — for the last two years. The business was homegrown, promising locally sourced whiskey and bearing the name of the 10th Mountain Division, of which Avignon’s grandfather Fred Vetter was a medic in during the 1940s. At the time, the U.S. Army trained at Camp Hale, about 30 minutes away from Vail.
“The patriotic men of the 10th brought diversity, courage, and hope to the Rocky Mountains when they arrived in the 1940′s to train just a few miles south of what is now Vail,” the 10th Whiskey’s website states. “They were part of the greatest generation of men, wanting to make each day count and each day better than the last. The mentality they had was strong after being shaped from the rigors of mountain warfare, their ego’s humble.
“The 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company is an extension of the mountain lifestyle, bringing together the old with the new,” the statement continued. “Generation after generation, men and women alike, all share this same passion, enjoying it for a day, a weekend, a lifetime, or somewhere in between. No matter how long it’s embraced the combination of friends, mountains, memories and spirits, bring people together like no other.”
Sylvan Ellefson’s new business card for 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company in Vail, Colo. (Courtesy photo)
The two founders approached Ellefson late last summer with a proposal, in full support of his racing career, letting him know they’d have a job for him at the distillery later on if he was interested. As Ellefson understood it, he would assume a range of jobs and responsibilities in the early days of the business (including social media, event planning, and merchandise design and ordering), and eventually become the tasting-room manager — “somebody who’s going to meet and greet the people and hopefully cause customers to come back and help create that brand loyalty,” according to Ellefson — at their tasting room in Vail.
The 7,000-square-foot distillery, where the alcohol is made, would be at a leased space in Gypsum, Colo., about 30 miles from Vail, and Ellefson confirmed both the tasting room and distillery were in place and planning to open mid-summer. As of now, they’re waiting on licensing and all the necessary paperwork to be approved.
In April, the Kickstarter online fundraiser Ellefson put in place raised nearly $28,000 dollars, well over the company’s $25,000 goal. A day before the campaign ended, he wrote on Facebook that an “Angel donor” pledged $10,000 for a personalized 53-gallon whiskey barrel and bottles containing a whiskey named after the donor.
While the money Kickstarter raised wasn’t essential for 10th Mountain Whiskey’s development, it’s a good chunk of change toward establishing their business, estimated to cost at least half a million dollars, according to Ellefson.
“The reason we did the Kickstarter is because we are starting mom-and-pop style,” he said. “We really wanted people, even before we had a product to feel, especially in this small town, that they were a part of something like this.”
The three faces of the 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company, including Sylvan Ellefson (l) dressed in corn at Vail’s Closing Day. (Courtesy photo)
The craft distillery will be the first in the Vail area, with another distillery about 45 minutes away in Breckenridge and some smaller distilleries down the valley from Vail, he said.
“The neat thing about craft distilling is there’s not a ton of competition. If anything it’s more craft distilleries working together to compete against the Jim Beams, the Jack Daniels, the big guys,” he explained. “It’s kind of cool to see a couple craft distilleries help market each other and make craft distilling a cool thing, especially in the state of Colorado.”
He learned there were more than 250 craft breweries in Colorado, a boom which distillery owners are anticipating will hit their industry. Adding to the hype, there’s a possibility that 10th Mountain Whiskey could be featured in a reality TV show about startup craft distilleries, although Ellefson wasn’t sure of the details.
“We are a sponsor of the GoPro Games in Vail, CO coming up June 5-8 and will have a tent with all of our spirit accessories including whiskey barrels, rocks glasses, pint glasses, t-shirts, hats, flasks, stainless steel mason jars, etc.,” he wrote in an email.
Sylvan Ellefson getting some “corn air” at Vail’s Closing Day in late April. (Courtesy photo)
And this week, he’s fyling to Kentucky — Bourbon Country — to pick up some barrels and drive them back to Colorado, and plans to post updates about his road trip on Facebook.
As for the farmer’s market, Ellefson said that’s a possiblity since Colorado allows distilleries to sell liquor from different locations simultaneously (i.e. a tasting room and a farmer’s market).
“I love whiskey,” he said with a laugh. “You definitely have to know your product so to be able to taste other bourbons and whiskeys … I’d say in the month of April I was a pretty avid whiskey taster.”
He’s also taken an advanced distilling class to learn about the process, but none of the partners will actually create the product. Thompson and Avignon attended Moonshine University in Louisville to learn the ins and outs of whiskey making, but will hire a master distiller to do the dirty work.
They plan to purchse a still from Vendrome Copper & Brass Works, which could cost around $150,000 to $200,000 for a 500-gallon tank.
According to The Bourbon Review, they’ll start off with a corn moonshine, a rye whiskey, a Bourbon, a potato vodka and a sage infused, peach-vanilla cordial.
And whenever Ellefson’s not promoting the business, he’ll be off enjoying some of what he’s missed over the years, like Colorado hut trips in the middle of the winter and back-to-back-to-back weekends with friends in Moab, Utah. Earlier this month at the Greenland Trail 25 k in Larkspur, Colo., Ellefson placed ninth in 1:48:23.
“I’ve been pretty excited to start a new life,” he said. “Especially doing it with [my wife] Sarah [who graduated physical therapy school in May], because we’ve never been able to spend a ton of time together. … Even the little times when we get to do these backcountry skinning trips or these little bike trips, we’re just like, man if we could just do this all the time, it would be so fun and so awesome. Now that we’ve been able to do that a little bit, I’m happy that I made the decision that I did.”
Sylvan Ellefson and his wife, Sarah, await the podium ceremony after Ellefson won the men’s 30 k freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals in January.
A U.S. Ski Team member for the last two seasons, Tad Elliott (SSCV/Team HomeGrown) races to 34th in the 15 k freestyle individual start at World Championships on Feb. 27 in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Elliott was not renamed to the 2013/2014 U.S. team, but will continue to pursue skiing in hopes of making the 2014 Olympics.
Tad Elliott knows what it feels like to get bucked off the bike, and why it’s important to get back on again.
The two-time U23 mountain-bike national champion from Durango, Colo., has been there before, essentially stepping away from a sport he loves to give everything he had to another: skiing. In 2010, U.S. Nordic Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover reportedly told him he had what it took to make the national squad, but he needed to scale back his mountain biking significantly to do so.
The son of three-time Olympic cross-country skier Mike Elliott, Tad decided to go for it. He put biking on the backburner, ramped up his offseason ski training (i.e. running, rollerskiing, weight lifting), and in 2011, made the U.S. Ski Team (USST).
Almost exactly two years later, Elliott is at another crossroads. One of three men not renamed to the USST, which was announced earlier this week (Kris Freeman and Skyler Davis are the other two), the 25-year-old Ski & Snowboard Club Vail/Team HomeGrown skier was a little stunned.
A month and a half ago at World Championships, he heard there was a possibility of him not being nominated to the 2013/2014 squad, but before an Olympic season? He tried not to overthink it and just kept plugging.
In his third of four races in Val di Fiemme, Italy, Elliott anchored the U.S. men’s team to a solid 10th-place finish in the World Championships 4×10-kilometer relay. Previously, he placed 34th in the 15 k freestyle, and two days after the relay, he was 40th in the 50 k classic mass start.
“I thought I had a pretty solid season, I scored points in Canada [finishing 28th in the World Cup skiathlon] and my sprinting got better,” Elliott said on the phone from Durango. “Especially World Champs and the relay, I thought my season was going to be good enough to be on the Ski Team.”
Just over a week ago, he received a call from his longtime coach, Jason Cork, now the USST assistant men’s coach.
“I actually wasn’t that surprised to learn that I wasn’t going to be back on the team,” Elliott said, thinking back to the initial buzz he heard about it at World Championships.
His conversations with Cork and Grover were amiable, he said, and the former B-team member announced his intentions to return.
“Even Cork said, ‘All the pieces to the puzzle are there, they just didn’t come together last year,’ ” Elliott explained.
Elliott was sick for much of the season, recovering then traveling home for a bit where illness struck again. His mom had a cold most of the winter, he said, and every time he came home, it seemed to take hold of him. Still feeling off at U.S. SuperTour Finals in early April, Elliott said he was going to get some blood work done to make sure he was on the mend.
“There were still some things good parts to last year, just want to make sure everything’s good for next year,” he said.
As for next year, the big question is: ski or mountain bike? Elliott said he didn’t give the latter much thought.
“I made the decision last year to really go in for skiing,” he said. “I didn’t really focus on the bike at all and tried to focus on skiing hoping for a great year. I did have a tough year results-wise and understood it, so I’m still gonna stay with that plan.”
Two of his biggest skiing sponsors, Salomon and Swix, told Elliott they’d stick with him. Salomon encouraged Elliott to join its factory team at some trail running races this summer, which he said would be a new experience, but he was excited about the opportunity.
In addition, he’s going to start riding again, competing in some local mountain bike races in Vail, Colo., where he’ll be based with his team, Ski & Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV)/HomeGrown.
“[My coach] Eric Pepper said, ‘You definitely need to be on the bike and having a good time. It’s something that’s made you successful in the past,’ ” Elliott said.
All he needs is a bike. When he committed to the USST two years ago, he had to give his bikes back to Specialized, his sponsor.
“I’m mountain-bike-less right now,” Elliott said with a laugh. “So that’s kind of my goal in the next week.”
Also on his radar, Elliott’s in the process of coordinating training dates with Freeman and some current USST members. When he didn’t make the team, his Vail coaches, Dan Weiland and Pepper, rose to action. They started planning on-snow camps with Noah Hoffman, Andy Newell and Simi Hamilton, all of which were renamed to the U.S. team.
Freeman and Elliott texted each other when they heard the news and resolved to meet up this summer in Colorado and the East Coast, where Freeman is based with the Maine Winter Sports Center.
“When I learned I wasn’t on the team, I was disappointed for sure, but a big part of me was relieved, too,” Elliott said. “Team HomeGrown [has] been supporting me really well for the last two seasons and the Colorado community, especially my hometown of Durango, they have all the tools in place to create successful cross-country ski racers from helping us fundraise, coaching, [and] they have really talented strength coaches.”
Knowing that he’ll be training with his former U.S. teammates comforted him as well.
“I think last year’s Ski Team men are still going to be training together this year leading into Sochi,” Elliott said. “I’m glad those guys are still friends of mine and still really want to go training. I don’t see a huge difference from my training-camp perspective.”
In terms of goals, Elliott’s still shooting for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. First, he will have to prove he’s at an international level and said it hadn’t been decided “100 percent” whether he’ll start racing domestically or on the World Cup.
“Most likely I’ll be in the U.S. and hopefully racing fast to get there,” Elliott said. “It’s the same as it was last year: you have to race fast. Wherever you are, you have to race fast so if it’s in West Yellowstone or on the World Cup, I think it’ll be apparent who’s going well and who should be on the team.”
Asked if he ever wonders what a career in mountain biking would be like, he said, “sometimes.” At the same time, he’s happy he chose skiing.
“I really enjoy the skiing lifestyle,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder, but I only wonder, I don’t really regret my decision.”
For now, Elliott said he’s committed to skiing for at least another year, probably two, and figures he’ll have time to try his hand at mountain biking later on.
“I love ski racing and if other people are racing fast on an international level with the ski team, good for them, they’ll be fun to watch,” he said. “I believe I’ll always be a skier in the U.S. having a good time, but I kind of still have mountain biking, I hope, as a card in my pocket. It seems like those guys are getting older and still racing fast so maybe someday I can go back to pro-mountain biking. I’m just keeping it open right now. We’ll see.”
Kikkan Randall getting some help from two Ski & Snowboard Club Vail juniors to hold the hefty Crystal Globe, which she won as the World Cup sprint champion last season. (Courtesy photo)
When Kikkan Randall talks about being injured, her tone matches the description of any other day: the sun is shining; life is good.
For more than two months, the 29-year-old U.S. Ski Team (USST) veteran has been healing a stress reaction in her right foot by wearing a walking boot outside of training. An MRI five weeks ago revealed she needed to dial back her workout efforts to 50 percent and stay away from certain activities, such as skiing and running.
As if that wasn’t hard enough for a nordic skier, let alone the defending World Cup sprint champion, Randall discovered last Wednesday that she wasn’t completely in the clear. Follow-up imaging with Dr. Tom Clanton at The Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., revealed that her stress reaction – a weakening of the bone in her foot – had become a stress fracture. The good news was it was already healing.
One day before the start of the final USST dryland camp in Park City, Utah, Randall spoke on the phone Monday about her injury and plan of attack for the season ahead. She had just finished a 2 ½-hour mountain bike ride in Park City with her husband, Jeff Ellis, and said she was enjoying spending some extra time with him.
Meanwhile she aimed to stay patient with about six and a half weeks to go until the World Cup opener Nov. 24 in Gällivare, Sweden. Last week, doctors estimated it would be eight or nine weeks before she could resume race-pace intensity.
“That puts me right about when the race season is supposed to start,” Randall said. “I’m hoping I’ll be in at least a good enough place to be able to compete in those races. I don’t know what kind of shape I’m going to be in because I won’t be able to do full-on intervals for a while still, maybe four or five weeks from now, so I’m going to have to change my goals a little bit.”
***
FasterSkier:What kind of goals do you have at this point?
Kikkan Randall: Those first races will have to be to build back up and get in shape, and hopefully be in a good place by Tour de Ski. … Tour de Ski was one of the big goals and I think that’s still a good possibility to go there and perform well. It’ll be fun to see the World Cup races in Sochi (Jan. 1-3) and maybe have some good performances there, but really probably the biggest goal of the season is focused around World Championships and using the second half of the season to test things out and figure out what works well. That’ll give me something to work on next year.
FS:What are you specifically aiming for at World Championships (Feb. 20-March 3 in Val di Fiemme, Italy)?
KR: I’d like to make the final in the classic sprint. I’d like to have our team fight for a medal in the team sprint. I think we can put together a relay, the 4-by-5 k in the top six. This will be the first championships where I’m almost more excited about the team goals than my own. I mean, I obviously want to race well myself, but I’m excited about what we can do as a team. That’ll give me some extra motivation in rehabbing this foot injury, too, knowing that I really want to be there and competing with the team in February.
FS:How did you react to discovering your stress fracture last week?
KR: I think overall it was a positive visit. They did see some new bone growth in the area where the fracture is so they felt that was a good sign, and I can gradually start building back into training, but it’s going to be a pretty gradual process. With skiing, it’s quite challenging because we have so many things to reintroduce – skating, classic, running, strength training – so it’s still going to take me many weeks to build back in, but at least we saw some progress.
That helps knowing just by reducing my training and taking the impact off my foot that it was able to heal, so that makes me feel good going forward. If I behave myself and gradually reintroduce things, then I’ll be in a good place by the time we race. It’s still hard because five weeks of it was an easy target to focus on, and it would’ve been nice to put my five weeks in and jump back in to be being totally normal, but I know that if I continue to be a little bit patient, the season is long. Even if I’m not racing quite as well as I want to the first period, the biggest races are still in the second half of the season. So I’m just kind of focusing on that and focusing on what I can do and using this as a time to work on some of my weakness, and hopefully we’ll all be laughing about this in a few months.
FS:Who are some of your biggest supporters?
KR: Everybody, really, has been incredibly supportive. It was [U.S. women’s coach] Matt Whitcomb that kind of finally sat down with me at the end of the Swedish camp and said, ‘You know, look, this is obviously an issue that’s not going away; as hard as it is to slow down, let’s deal with it now so that you’re good to go by the season.’ So I credit him a lot with getting me to finally do something about it. When I came back to Anchorage, [Alaska Pacific University coach] Erik [Flora] was really supportive, and Jeff and my parents, and then my teammates keep checking in on me and pumping me up and stuff. I’m really lucky to have so many good supportive people around.
FS:How’s your Achilles injury in your left foot?
KR: That’s actually gotten a lot better. That’s the one thing I could work on over the last five weeks because all the PT I was doing was primarily to heal that up. It’s feeling really good, and I think slowly reintroducing running and skiing back in is going to be really good for that injury to make sure it’s totally healed, too.
FS:What’s your training plan moving forward?
KR: I got the clearance to return to normal volume so that’ll be good, and then I can start adding in a little classic striding to begin with. While I’m down here in Park City, I’m going to take advantage of the AlterG [anti-gravity] treadmill they have here to start reintroducing running and combine that with pool running to help build the running back in. If that all goes well, in maybe three weeks I can start adding in a little bit of skating and then a little bit of classic intensity. If all that goes well, I can start doing a little skate intensity and a little running intensity.
FS:You anticipated not being able to do the USST testing at the Center of Excellence (COE) this week. Will you be able to join the team for any workouts?
KR: I’ll be able to join them a few sessions this week because classic skiing, I can, for sure, double pole and I can add in a little striding. I’ll be at the strength center at the same time, but then a few of the workouts will be on my own.
FS:Do you still have to wear the walking boot?
KR: I put two solid months into the walking boot and luckily they said I can actually stop wearing it unless I feel like my foot needs a rest. I did wear it [Sunday] at Fast and Female because I knew that once I got around everyone jumping and playing and dancing, I’d want to do it too, and they said absolutely no jumping until probably after the Tour de Ski so, I put the boot on so I wouldn’t be tempted.
FS: How was the Fast and Female event in Park City?
KR: We had a blast as usual. Those events are almost four hours long and there’s a lot of energy going around so you definitely feel a little worn out by the end of the day, but it’s totally worth it. The girls, you can just tell, they’re having so much fun. They’re like sponges soaking up every word the ambassadors say so you can tell we’re making a big difference.
We had, I think, 75 girls age nine to 19 and then about 30 ambassadors. Between the parents and everybody, we had probably 120 people there, which I think is a pretty significant size.
FS:We’ve seen photos of you and the kids holding your Crystal Globe. Do you bring that everywhere?
KR: With the [U.S.] Ski Team, this is kind of the last interface before the season starts so they asked me to bring it down so we could do some photos and things. I pulled it out when we went over to the Ski Club Vail and it worked out to have it at Fast and Female [Sunday]. It’s not the easiest thing to just haul around, but it is really fun to share with everybody. … I’d say it’s about 20 pounds probably in the box that it comes in. It’s kind of an awkward size; you have to hold it off your hip a little bit.
It is definitely covered in fingerprints right now because when I was at home [in Anchorage, Alaska] I was doing a bunch of visits to elementary schools, and I was letting the kids all rub the Globe on their way out of the gym and then everybody got to touch it [Sunday]. It’s going to need a good Windex cleaning in a little bit.
FS: When will you leave Park City (with the rest of APU, which isn’t going to the USST camp in Canmore, Alberta)?
KR: Next Thursday I’m headed back to Alaska and hopefully we’ll be able to get on snow pretty soon after.
FS:What else have you been up to since arriving in Utah?
KR: We went to a friend’s wedding this weekend [in Sundance]. (Former APU/U.S. World Cup team member Katie Ronsse married Justin Libby).
It was a great time. Sundance is beautiful and it was really fun because I haven’t seen Katie in a while. She’s going to PT school in Salt Lake now. It was a great wedding, good time, and it was so nice of them to plan it conveniently around the training camp.
Sarah and Sylvan Ellefson showing the love while on a zip line in Kauai, Hawaii, during their honeymoon earlier this month. The two were married Aug. 11 and spent eight days in Hawaii immediately after. (Sylvan Ellefson courtesy photo)
Thousands of miles from the U.S. mainland on the northern island of Hawaii, Sylvan Ellefson tweeted photos from his honeymoon in Kauai. He posted the first the day after arriving with his new wife, Sarah Ellefson, formerly Wright.
“Lounging after a casual 3hr waterfall run,” wrote Ellefson, the 25-year-old defending SuperTour champion.
Friends and family tweeted back in retaliation. Training? They should be relaxing for crying out loud! Ellefson responded two days later.
“She made me,” he tweeted. “All I want is another Piña Colada.”
Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson (formerly Wright) on their honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii. (Courtesy photo)
Between kicking back at luaus and happy hour, riding zip lines and exploring a 4,300-acre ranch on four wheels, Ellefson and his bride enjoyed plenty of R & R on their eight-day getaway. The two were married Saturday, Aug. 11, at a lakeside ranch near his hometown in Vail, Colo., and left for Kauai the following Monday.
Slightly more than two weeks later, Ellefson was back home resting before an interval session with his Ski and Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV) team. That morning, he ran 30 minutes, did 1 ½ hours of strength and an hour double pole.
“It’s been a big day,” Ellefson said on the phone Monday afternoon.
But he was ready to get back at it since arriving home a few days earlier. Once back in the U.S., the Ellefsons headed to Minnesota, where Sarah – a former University of New Hampshire skier – is from. Then they went to Boulder, where Sarah lives while studying physical therapy, to watch the USA Pro Am Cycling Challenge last weekend.
“I’m jazzed to be moving around again,” Ellefson said. “The wedding week was pretty crazy and then the honeymoon was nice and relaxing, kind of.”
He laughed.
Here’s the rest of FasterSkier’s interview with Ellefson, which details everything from the wedding-day downpour to what the Colorado native and World Championships hopeful has planned for this season.
***
FasterSkier: Now that you’re a husband, how do you feel?
Sarah and Sylvan Ellefson were married Aug. 11 at Piney River Ranch near Vail, Colo. (DavidLynn Photography)
Sylvan Ellefson: Totally different. I feel like a whole different person. No, I’m kidding. It doesn’t feel any different at all other than I’ve got this hunk of metal on my finger. I keep playing around with it, I’m sure I’m going to lose this thing here.
FS: Tell me about the wedding. How did you decide to get married there and how did it go?
SE: We got married at the Piney River Ranch. It’s north of Vail, half an hour by dirt road. We originally wanted to [get married] at the top of Vail Mountain, which is where my parents got married, but then Sarah’s mom came into town and I told them to go check out this one other place just to see if they wanted to do that. They went up to Piney River Ranch last August, I think it was, and checked it out and I’m pretty sure we booked it that same day that they went up there.
Everything [the ceremony, reception, etc.] was up there. It started at four, and it was super nice when we got up there. The clouds were kind of moving around the mountains … and then right before the wedding was supposed to happen, we started the procession and everyone was outside on the wedding deck. It started raining a little bit, and then the rain started coming down pretty hard and people started opening umbrellas. All of a sudden it was a torrential downpour and then it started hailing (laughs). It was crazy. Everyone went back into the dressing rooms and everything, and we had to talk to the ranch owners to figure out what we wanted to do. We looked at the clouds coming, and it just looked like it was going to be some kind of pretty crazy weather.
We ended up having a super-intimate wedding; it was actually really nice. We moved everybody in under the covered area. The lake that was behind us started steaming because of the contrast of the hail and the air and everything. The backdrop was really cool, and obviously I didn’t get to see it because I was looking right at Sarah and the crowd the whole time.
Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson (center) celebrate their marriage with their wedding party at Piney River Ranch on Aug. 11 near Vail, Colo. (Courtesy photo)
[Note: The rain stopped after the ceremony and the skis remained clear all night.]
We did the wedding there and then everyone ate and we danced for a bunch of hours. We had a bonfire and a keg back behind the camping area, right behind where the wedding was, and we just hung out around the fire until two in the morning. It was super fun and everyone that was up there camped and then cruised down the next morning. We stayed in a cabin that was up there.
The next morning we woke up and kind of cleaned everything up and Sarah and I rode down the dirt road back into Vail on this tandem mountain bike. It’s probably like eight or nine miles to Piney River, but it’s a really bumpy dirt road.
FS: How was Hawaii?
SE: We had an awesome trip. We were literally at our hotel maybe five percent of the whole time we were in Kauai. … We got in really late the first night and then the next morning we met with the concierge to kind of figure out what we wanted to do, and it was basically, like, bam, bam, bam, everything after that. Right after that we went for that three-hour run up to a waterfall. That night we went to a luau. The next morning, we went zip lining for a half day and then we found a swimming hole and chilled there for a while. We had to go hit up happy hour at the bar that afternoon, otherwise we were paying like 12 dollars per drink (laughs).
Newlyweds Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson spent a day and a night at Kauai Ranch in Hawaii, where several movies like Tropic Thunder, Dragonfly and The Descendants, were filmed. They explored on a four-wheeler and stayed in a yurt. (Courtesy photo)
Probably the coolest part of the whole honeymoon, though, was we went to this ranch called Kauai Ranch and it is the ranch where, like, “Tropic Thunder” and “Dragonfly” and part of “The Descendents” was filmed. We stayed at this really sweet little canvas yurt-tent. It was like this [4,300]-acre ranch and we went an explored it running one morning and then we got to use this four-wheeler vehicle, the Gator, for another five hours in the afternoon and we didn’t even cover all the trails that were on the ranch.
FS: Did you rest at all?
SE: Oh yeah. We probably slept, like, nine hours a night. It was nice. Leading up to the wedding it was, like, five hours, six hours, five hours, five hours.
FS: When did you and Sarah get engaged and how did you meet?
SE: We got engaged last July 22. We met at Carnival Crush, you know that little tradition that the East-coast skiers have on Valentine’s Day? Sarah gave me a live goldfish when we were juniors in college and it kind of just sparked after that. I think that was four and a half or five years ago. She said it was our first pet together. I didn’t know how to take that. I think she was joking, but I took her seriously, so jokes on her!
Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson take to the dance floor at their wedding on Aug. 11 at Piney River Ranch. (Courtesy photo)
FS: And you two recently had dinner with Kikkan?
SE: I had no idea she was going to be in town and she texted me last Thursday night [Aug. 23], like, ‘Hey I’m in Vail. We should catch up, grab some food or something.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, Friday night.’ It was good to see her because I haven’t seen her before we left Spring Series.
FS: Whom have you mostly trained with this summer?
SE: [In] May, I did the Bend camp, and then a couple weeks later we came back to Bend with the junior team and a couple post-grad students and the Bend locals, like [XC Oregon’s] Ollie Burruss and Matt Briggs were there, so I trained there for about half of June.
When we came back I mostly trained with a lot of the junior and then the college guys that are here for the summer, like Conor Wallace and Sean Woods and Tony Ryerson. Actually [SSCV nordic director] Dan [Weiland] and [head coach] Eric [Pepper] have been getting out on the rollerskis quite often this summer so they’ve kind of been training partners as well. And then Cal Deline and Parker McDonald, Christian Shanley, all those juniors.
[Team HomeGrown teammate] Ryan Scott was here for a week in July right before the wedding, and we had a good training week together. I just missed [U.S. Ski Team members and Homegrown teammates] Tad [Elliott] and Noah [Hoffman]. They came right after the wedding when I went to Hawaii. I think they did a bunch of skiing with the juniors here and the other college guys.
FS: How’s training gone so far?
Sylvan Ellefson (front) joins the Ski and Snowboard Club Vail junior team in Bend, Ore., for an on-snow camp this past spring. (Courtesy photo)
SE: Training’s actually been really awesome this summer. I think it’s always really great to kick it off with training in Bend in that May-June period. To be on snow that early in the season is kind of exciting instead of being on rollerskis and getting in the habit for the entire summer it’s fun to be able to ski on snow. You’re still kind of used to it. And then come July, you’re just starting to pick things up. I did a lot of running races and biking races this summer and those have been going pretty well and it’s fun because we have a pretty competitive local race series for [trail] running and [mountain] biking, so I’ve been doing those.
FS: You blogged about placing third for the first time in a pro mountain bike race in July. Was that a goal of yours?
SE: It’s a pretty competitive race series. A lot of the guys actually do race pro and race around the U.S. and I scored a third place in one of the races. I was pretty psyched for that because I’m usually like fourth every time.
If I train biking, it’s more like a recovery thing and if I do the bike races, it’s more of an intensity spot. For me, it’s good to keep that race vibe going to make sure I get that race feeling every now and then, and I don’t totally forget before the first race pops up at the beginning of the season.
FS: How does your training plan this summer compare to last year?
SE: Basically when I was over in Europe, I definitely got my butt kicked, which I think was good and bad. It kind of sucks to get your butt kicked sometimes, but it’s also a really good learning experience.
Every time I felt like there was something I could work on, I wrote it down and sent it to Eric and Dan and we compiled a list of things to work on this summer to help me get ready for the upcoming race season. It ranged from doing more double-pole sessions to changing up our intervals a little bit, like, changing formats of races like having the preems. We’ve been doing a lot of intervals where we switch from just Level 3 and just Level 4 to doing a Level 3 piece with some Level 4 in between and then dropping back down to L3 and bringing it up again.
I noticed in a lot of the mass-start races, you can see on TV the front of the pack is usually so calm and collected. When you’re in the front, you get in a really good rhythm. I was watching all these races I was in on the World Cup last year, seeing these guys up front it just looks like it’s so easy. What they don’t show is in the back, it’s just nuts because it’s all the people who are probably racing a couple of their first races or whatever and they’re just really stressing out, me included. They’re trying to get a good spot and it requires more energy to ski at the back of the pack, especially in the beginning of the race. Until I start skiing better, I’m not going to be at the front of the pack so I need to kind of adjust to that back-of-the-pack skiing. For me, that was being able to, maybe fresh off the bat, hold onto like a Level 2 or even a Level 4 pace and then dropping back into a threshold pace without totally going under, being able to recover from it.
FS: How are you feeling heading into this season?
SE: I think my confidence going into this year is much better, which will be good. I’m not going to lie, lining up when I was in Rybinsk for my first mass start, looking at the people that I was lined up next to it was like, ‘Holy crap, these are all the people that I’ve ever watched on TV and now I’m standing next to them.’ Obviously, everybody’s going to have that shock value. I think going into this year, it’s more focused for me on a result more than experience. It’s not in my head that I’m just going to be racing World Cup this year, I want to be racing fast and I want to be getting results.
I think the first period will be good for me. What qualified me to go over to Europe last year were like 10 and 15 k skate and classic races, and I’m pretty excited to race those first races because I think there’s three 15 k’s and maybe one 10 k. I’m excited about that. I’m pretty excited with how my prologue and sprinting has been going, and then this fall, hopefully I’ll be able to ramp it up a little bit in Lake Placid and Park City and Canmore with these top-tier sprinters in the U.S., Simi and Newell.
FS: So you’re going to take advantage of a paid-for trip to the World Cup (as the SuperTour winner) and race Period 1 in Europe and Canada? Are you worried about relying on World Cup results to qualify for World Championships, rather than stay home and qualify domestically?
SE: I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. It was kind of a tactical decision because the world champs team is decided off your FIS points, but it’s kind of taking a chance. If I were to race in the U.S. and I was racing as well as I did at the beginning of last season, I would be getting good enough FIS points to bring me to World Champs. On the other hand, I would be giving up and opportunity to go race the World Cup, and I feel like that would be just a wasted opportunity.
Dan and Eric and I all decided that it would probably be best if I just took advantage of that opportunity. Assuming that I go into the first period as fit as I was last year, then I think me on a perfect day, skiing like I would at the top of my game, would land me a top-30 result, which is something that I’m looking for in this upcoming period.
The biggest reason that I’ve decided to go over to Europe this first period, I guess it depends on my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal is to progress U.S. skiing and kind of help the U.S. men to get to that next level. I think if I were to stay home that would be a little bit of a disservice to that.
I’m approaching this season similar to how I approached last season. If I stick to a similar plan just upping my hours from last year, I think that technically my body should react well to it. Hopefully period one shouldn’t be smooth sailing necessarily, but it should hopefully feel good while I’m racing over there. If I’m feeling good, hopefully I’ll be getting that top-30 spot that I want.
FS: What other goals do you have?
SE: I would love to get a top 30 on the World Cup. One of my goals is to win a race at U.S. nationals this year and then I guess another goal is just to rank in the top five for both sprint and distance in the U.S. at the end of next season. I think now I’m ranked fourth in the sprint, somehow, and seventh for distance.
[Note: Last year, Ellefson mostly made the top 60 in his first World Cup starts. He was third in the 15 k skate at U.S. nationals and finished the SuperTour series as the overall winner despite injuring his ankle in Sweden at the end of the season.]
FS: Looking back at the jump you made last year, what do you attribute your success to?
SE: I think my change in training and also it was kind of a change in confidence. The previous year, I had won two SuperTour races and just getting that feeling of winning a race is pretty cool. You know who you’re racing and you can beat them or you’re at that level, so you know you have the opportunity to bring yourself up to that next level.
Actually at the beginning of the [season] last year, I think it was November, I kind of changed [it] up. I never really prepped for a season like I had before last year, and I basically just did more intervals than I ever had the November before. I made sure I gave my body enough time to recover before those first races in Bozeman and West Yellowstone and I seemed to benefit [he won two SuperTour races in Bozeman and was second in two of the openers in West Yellowstone].
I’ve never skied that well early season so I was a little bit worried about U.S. nationals about how I’d be skiing there, but my body I guess … was fit and skied well. Unfortunately I got sick right after [nationals], and then went to Minnesota, skied well [he was second and third at the Minneapolis SuperTour], but got sick again after that. I was on antibiotics twice in, like, three weeks and I think it took a toll on my body before I went to Europe.
Then I had a good experience on the World Cup, and I honestly had no idea what to expect when I cam back to the U.S. I was racing every weekend, but I wasn’t able to train that much because I still wasn’t feeling 100 percent. When I came back to Vermont and I stayed with Liz Stephen, I skied, like, once, I went on a run once and then just kind of went into Spring Series without having trained that much, but I think my body held onto a lot of that fitness from the entire winter. My only goal was I really just wanted to get that World Cup spot for the fall, and I tried to race my butt off and ended up getting that spot, which I was super psyched about.
FS: And now you’re feeling good and the ankle is better?
SE: It’s great. My PT here in Vail has just done wonders for me. It’s all healed up and all that good stuff now. It’s pretty exciting for me not having to worry about that anymore.
FS: Next Monday, you wrote that you’re going back to school at Red Sandstone Elementary. What will you be doing?
SE: I’m a teacher’s assistant at my old elementary school. I go in for about 2-3 hours everyday when I am around. 4th graders. It’s super fun!
***
While Ellefson took care of business in Craftsbury, Vt., where he clinched the overall SuperTour title in late March, he also had some fun while staying at the home of his friend and U.S. Ski Team veteran, Liz Stephen. Her father helped film the following, and if you’re really into their music video, Ellefson said “The Bland” has another one coming soon.
![Cal Deline (Dartmouth Ski Team) racing to 17th in the men's 15 k freestyle at 2017 U.S. nationals earlier this month at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/01/3O4A0892.jpg")
![Cal Deline (Dartmouth Ski Team) finishing 14th in the 10 k freestyle at 2016 NCAA Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colo. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/01/LALNRKCVGCEEHDH.20160311204829.jpg")
![Pitkin Lake above East Vail in the Gore, with SSCV skiers (l to r) Gracie Shanley, Annie Blakslee and Lyle Shipp. (Photo: Eric Pepper)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/11/Pitkin-Lake.jpg")
![Sylvan Ellefson representing Team HomeGrown/SSCV last season at U.S. nationals in Midway, Utah. (Photo: Bert Boyer/http://bertboyer.zenfolio.com/) All proceeds from photo sales will be directly donated to NNF.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Ellefson.jpg")
![Tad Elliott (l) and Sylvan Ellefson (8) of SSCV/Team HomeGrown make their way up the last hill on the third of six laps with Mats Resaland (11) in the 30 k freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/end-of-lap-3.jpg")
![Hannah Hardenbergh leading a high-school race in Colorado. (Photo: SSCV)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/11/Hannah-Hardenbergh-Leading-the-Race-1024x907.jpg")
![2014 U.S. Distance Nationals 50 k classic mass start at Hillside trails in Anchorage, Alaska](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/03/IMG_5866.jpg")
![Vail Ski & Snowboard Academy, founded in 2007. (Photo: SSCV)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/11/sscv-academics-photos-exterior.png")
![The 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirits team: with partial partner Sylvan Ellefson (c) and owners Christian Avignon (l) and Ryan Thompson. (Photo: Slade Cogswell | 970 Design)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/10team.jpg")
![Sylvan Ellefson (SSCV/Team HomeGrown) at 2014 U.S. Cross Country Championships last week at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. (Photo: Swix)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Sylvan1.jpg")
![Sylvan Ellefson (SSCV/Team HomeGrown) pushes off the front with just over 5 k remaining in the men's 30 k freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/ellefson-end-of-lap-5.jpg")
![The 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company's lineup (Photo: 970 Designs)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/image-6.jpeg")
![Sylvan Ellefson while picking up barrels recently in Indiana for the 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/image-2.jpeg")
![Sylvan Ellefson's new business card for 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company in Vail, Colo.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/image-1.jpeg")
![The three faces of the 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company, including Sylvan Ellefson (l) dressed in corn at Vail's Closing Day. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/image.jpg")
![Sylvan Ellefson getting some "corn air" at Vail's Closing Day in late April. (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/05/image_1.jpg")
![Sylvan Ellefson and his wife, Sarah, await the podium ceremony after Ellefson won the men's 30 k freestyle mass start at U.S. nationals on Wednesday.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/ellefson.jpg")
![Tad Elliott climbing.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/02/IMG_9582.jpg")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/10/A4eJIkBCcAEQCPO.jpg" "Kikkan Randall, Ski and Snowboard Club Vail, Crystal Globe")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/IMG_3206-1.jpg" "Sarah and Sylvan Ellefson, zip line, Kauai, Hawaii")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/IMG_1310.jpg" "Sylvan and Sarah Wright Ellefson")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/394422_3469731982723_986682018_n.jpeg" "Sarah and Sylvan Ellefson wedding")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/427565_3476377108847_194705179_n.jpeg" "Sylvan Ellefson, Sarah, wedding")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/kauai.ranch_.jpg" "Kauai Ranch, Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/215557_10100376041566591_864145389_n.jpeg" "Sylvan and Sarah Ellefson, wedding")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/IMG_2750.jpg" "Ski and Snowboard Club Vail, Sylvan Ellefson, juniors, Bend")