Arc City

AJ Hurt, of @ustechteam fame, is an awesome chat. We talked about her almost-complete engineering degree, getting out of inevitable slumps, dealing with weird tingly shoulder pain, what it’s actually like going to the Olympics, competing with her best friend, playing Fortnite, helping run the @ustechteam account, her Mikaela Shiffrin stories, and more, of course. We do a seldom-run but often-reque...

The elusive, four-discipline-winning, win-or-DNF, legend of American ski racing Bode Miller visits Arc City, at long last. First, we catch up on his life and family at the current moment. Then I try to ask him questions he has yet to be asked about his childhood growing up ripping around Cannon Mountain and tromping around the woods of Franconia alone. He talks about almost switching to snowboardi...

We crashed and burned on our first ski team-saving attempt (see: Middlebury club team), but we're looking good so far with CMC... The Colorado Mountain College Ski Team, you'll remember from an episode last year, was on the brink of extinction due to funding cuts at the school. However, the ever-resourceful ski racing world rallied and helped prolong the CMC team for at least two more years. I cha...

Dane Spencer, though long since retired from the World Cup, has remained in the thick of American ski racing. He has been behind numerous successful return-to-snow injury comebacks among current U.S. Ski Team athletes, as well as a concerted push through his independent camps to help educate young racers about the finer details of equipment maintenance—in addition to ski technique. Dane was teamma...

Paula Moltzan continues to trend upwards—her bronze medal at the World Championships was just another step. Of course, I ask her about her stellar results recently, but also about her team (one of my favorites on the World Cup), her youth at the slalom factory on Buck Hill in Minnesota, having her husband as her technician, her influence on young skiers, her time off of the US Ski Team attending t...

Bryce Bennett does not mince words, which makes him fun to converse with. The tallest man on the World Cup circuit also takes the title for longest Arc City episode to date--but the full listen is worth it, especially his advice to young skiers near the end. Bryce has a keen eye for many aspects of the sport, and we covered a lot of them, including equipment fine-tuning, the high injury rate in Wo...

Another year, another ski team on the chopping block. While it’s not certain we can save the Colorado Mountain Ski Team, it’s at least worth telling their story, because they fill a crucial role in the American ski racing world, and they do it quite well. I talked with CMC head coach Scott Tanner and senior ski team member Matthew Macaluso about their team: the success of recent members, its affor...

Mike Day has witnessed a lot of skiing greatness firsthand. He’s coached Bode Miller, Ted Ligety, and Mikaela Shiffrin, among others. And he graciously let us plumb the depths of his knowledge: Bode stories, observations of Hirscher, the common thread through all champions’ mindsets, a hypothetical debate about the skiing improvements in the last 10 years, and many more fully-developed pearls of a...

Who makes up the jury? How does timing work? How many people does it take to run a race? There is a lot more to it than meets the eye--and it's surprisingly fun to talk about. John Norton, executive director and alpine program director at NYSEF, runs me through every detail, from chief of race, to ski patrol, to hand-timing scenarios, to FIS codexes and scheduling. Any ski racer worth their salt w...

The Greatest Arcer of All Time should need no introduction. (He is a five-time World Champion, two-time Olympic Champion, and the man who tamed the 35-meter GS ski). Ted and I talked about the end of his career in 2021, how his back is doing now, the specific technology that helped him crush his competition, what he thinks of World Cup skiers now, his current endeavor developing skis for DPS, and...

We don’t talk about this enough: there are 128 colleges and universities across the US with a club ski team that competes in USCSA. (Far more than the 22 that compete in the NCAA). It’s a whole universe of fun, low-cost ski racing. First, former Dartmouth club team captain Colton Sankey takes us through the basics of USCSA racing. Then we talk to Noah Willson (19:12), who is currently trying to st...

Sasha Rearick has coached Bode Miller, Ted Ligety, Andrew Weibrecht…and most of the U.S. Men’s Team over an 18 year career. Now he’s at Apex2100 in France and more motivated than ever. We talk wacky courses, Sasha’s three core components to going fast, “expressing yourself” through skiing, the mind of Bode Miller, team dynamics, the role of coaches, leading the Apex2100 program, and—as always—so m...

There is the potential for an age-limit rule change in NCAA skiing. So I got three veterans of the American ski racing world to help talk through it, and we ended up discussing far more than that. We briefly walked through the history of college ski racing in the US, then we talked about statistics, average ages, the international wave of skiers, the proposed age-limit rule, the balance between th...

No one talks about technicians. Which is curious because they perform the most important job in ski racing aside from actually skiing. Bart Mollin is a technician for American tech skiers AJ Hurt and Nina O’Brien, and Ryan Mooney services Paula Moltzan’s skis. Their squad is steadily gaining in momentum on the World Cup these days. I sat down with both Ryan and Bart (another in-person interview!)...

This episode is a year late. No matter: we overcame the broken SD card and recorded a new interview with Atle Lie McGrath. One of the most fun skiers on the World Cup circuit and wise beyond his years, we had a fantastic conversation. He talked through his knee injury sustained at the 2023 World Champs and his recovery plan. We discussed mental health, his team dynamics (including a funny story in...

We might as well talk about it, right? Austrian speed skier and climate advocate Julian Schütter visits Arc City (1:57) to work through this often-polarizing topic. We start from the very basic “Is climate change real?” and progress through every tough question I can muster. Julian does not pretend to be a scientist, but he’s well-read on the subject and has conversed deeply about this before, whi...

Three years after the world engaged in deep conversations about diversity and inclusion, the topic may have faded for some—but certainly not for the National Brotherhood of Skiers (NBS). In August, nine young Black athletes supported by the NBS attended an elite conditioning and performance education camp at U.S. Ski Snowboard headquarters in Park City, UT. I Zoomed with three athletes on their la...

We visit Alice Robinson in New Zealand to kick off Arc City's fourth (!) winter. Alice and I sat with a view of Coronet Peak, her home mountain, and hashed it out about everything from her beginnings as a young wide-eyed skier to being a breakout star. Alice also talks about switching ski companies, the struggle to win World Cup races again, and Red Bull’s support. We also have some fun talking ab...

To close out the season the recently-crowned World Champion in slalom, Laurence St. Germain, visits The City. She tells us the story of winning that race—and what it’s like to beat Mikaela Shiffrin. Her story of skiing a World Cup race with no shin guards is another fascinating tale. We talk about her approach to training, which draws on her background as a currently-studying engineer. We discuss...

A couple of days ago I interviewed AJ Ginnis about his miraculous second place finish at the Chamonix World Cup slalom…then he went ahead and won the silver medal at the World Ski Championships. From growing up in Greece to his time in Austria, school in the United States, and ultimately representing Greece on the world stage, we cover AJ’s whole story. His telling of his Chamonix race gave me goo...

Hold onto your biscuits! Dave Ryding, Britain’s pride of the FIS Alpine World Cup, visits Arc City (in person!) to talk about his inspiring World Cup victory, his tuning setup, plastic snow, his team dynamic, his newborn baby, his secret to staying young at age 36, his coach’s wild course set at Wengen, his hobbies outside skiing, some fun questions—from listeners like you—at the end, and much mor...

Our third season of Arc City opens with a fun, inspiring story about small-town ski racing. We meet Aaron Loukes and Marcus Corey, the high school and middle school coaches at Lin-Wood Public School in Lincoln, New Hampshire (1:54). They have a fantastic model for how to run an affordable public school race program. We discuss everything from the ski swap system in Marcus' attic that helps recycle...

A conversation with President and CEO of U.S. Ski & Snowboard marks Arc City’s return from summer break. Sophie Goldschmidt has a long, impressive resume in international sports and marketing, but ski racing is a brand new world for her. Goldschmidt tells us about her first year getting to know the sport, what her goals are, and what her understanding of the problems facing ski racing are. She...

As the season comes to a close, River Radamus—a rising American GS star—and I talked shop (2:06). River is well-spoken and has some fascinating perspectives. First, we discuss the role media plays in Olympic ski racing. River tells a fun story about skiing on the same Olympic team as Mikaela Shiffrin. We also cover River’s source of motivation, his Olympic dreams, his hip-drags, and his theory—bas...

Luke Winters races tonight at the Olympics, and it is high time you learned his name and his story. He’s leading the charge for the American men’s slalom revival, but his path to the World Cup was a bit different than most. We talk about his upbringing, his ability to lay down fast runs on race day, his skill with heavy machinery, and the little details involved in skiing at a World Cup level. And...