Long before she drifted into the professional Nordic skiing sphere, Lauren Jortberg’s classmates at Boulder High School knew she was destined for something great.
The caption in her 2015 yearbook, alongside a photo of her and classmate Christian Feiler, read, “Future Olympians: This duo defined the athletic prowess of Boulder High School. Their talents surely qualified this pair for the Olympics. Be on the look-out for these two in the coming years!”
Eleven years later, the prophecy is coming true. But the past two months for the now 28-year-old Jortberg played out more like a nightmare, especially the night before she learned she’d been selected for the United States cross country ski team for the Milan Cortina Games.
She received the news Jan. 11.
“Essentially, I got an email from the head of the U.S. ski team before heading over to Europe, (saying) that the Olympic Committee would book all my flights for me because I was likely to be on the Olympic team,” Jortberg explained. “I think that was just a moment of, like, ‘Whoa.’
“I didn’t get the email because I went to bed before the emails were sent, and I had a horrible dream that they just decided to go against the criteria and went the discretionary route. I woke up in an absolute sweat that I didn’t make the team, and then I looked at my phone and I saw the email.”
Skiers have a sort of three-month “trial period” to prove they’re worthy of the Olympic call. During that time, an athlete must make it through the World Cup circuit with a top-eight finish, be globally ranked in the top 50 in the world in either the classic sprint or skate sprint, or perform well in the domestic racing circuit.
Due to some less-than-optimal starts on the World Cup circuit over the past few years, Jortberg decided on a different strategy. Her strong suit is generally the skate sprint.
“I opted to just go to the U.S. races in the beginning of the season to show that I could do other disciplines really well, especially because at the Olympics this year, it’s a classic sprint,” she explained. “That’s something I’ve been struggling with a little bit. I got the start to the classic sprint, and I think a lot of people were surprised by that because I haven’t gotten a classic sprint start in the second half of the World Cup season in the last, like, three years.”
Her season started about as well as she could have hoped on U.S. soil. She won both the qualifying and final rounds of the 1.3-kilometer U.S. Super Tour in Kincaid Park (Anchorage, Alaska), and then placed fifth in the U.S. National Championships F Final in the 1.5-kilometer discipline at Mount Van Hoevenberg (Lake Placid, New York). Three days later, on the same mountain, she took fourth in the C final.
At the World Cup on Jan. 24, in Goms, Switzerland, she secured her Olympic spot when she finished 31st — just 0.03 seconds behind 30th.
(Lauren Jortberg, pictured here at age 5, will be competing in the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympic Games in the cross country skiing classic sprint. (Photo provided by Rich Jortberg)Jortberg’s story wasn’t always so magical. It started with heartbreak when she didn’t make the junior national team in her first year of eligibility, and devolved into a series of injuries, missed starts on the World Cup circuit, and snubs that she felt didn’t reflect how talented she truly was.
Her youth coach from the Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team (now Boulder Nordic Team), Lenka Sterling, remembers that 2013 moment well. She said that Jortberg has been a case study in resilience ever since.
“It can be shattering for some of these kids when they don’t make the Junior Nationals their first year. Some of them quit. I knew she wouldn’t, but she really took it and made something out of it,” said Sterling, who now coaches in Vail. “We would do stuff around Boulder parks and do a lot of agility and stuff like that. I remember her being super quick, jumping over hurdles and having this quick, impulsive thing. But also, she was always super driven. She knew what she wanted and she was going after it, always. There was no saying no to her, really, at that time.”
After Boulder High, Jortberg competed at Dartmouth, where she made the All-America second team three times, save for her senior year, when she had to have back surgery. Any normal athlete may have abandoned their career following setback after setback, but through it all, Jortberg proved she was anything but normal.
She was never a prodigy.
“Lauren is a product of sticking to it — talent plus a lot of hard work,” her father, Rich, said. “She wanted to continue skiing, so it’s been a perseverance issue in addition to talent.”
With the Games just days away, Lauren has been hopping from country to country in Europe to prepare for her moment in the sun. She’ll compete in the classic sprint qualification Tuesday, with the hopes of making the quarterfinals later in the day.
Paul Wilburn, the co-treasurer of the Boulder Nordic Team, is organizing a watch party at Rayback Collective (2775 Valmont Road in Boulder), which will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday. The star of the show is already in Game mode.
“I’m just really focusing on how cool the opportunity is,” Lauren Jortberg said. “I’m really hungry and excited for this opportunity to showcase what I can do, I think, especially given (the World Cup). I was really close to the top 30. I’ve been thinking a lot about just taking this opportunity to appreciate the moment and not take it for granted. I’m just unbelievably excited to race.”
