“Timing is everything!” I heard someone say. And apparently it applies to writing a weekly column! Last week my trivia question was “Who was the first American to win an Olympic medal in Cross Country skiing?”
Thanks to Ben Ogden becoming the second American male to win an Olympic medal, the answer to my trivia has been in the news ever since!
Fifty years ago in the 1976 Winter Olympics on the same day Franz Klammer made his downhill run, Bill Koch won a silver medal in the 30km race. He was the first American of either gender to win a cross country medal. Since then American women have won a few medals thanks to Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins, but the males had been shut out until Ben Ogden made the breakthrough in the sprints last Tuesday. I’ll come back to Ogden and his ties with Bill Koch later, but first some more about Bill Koch.
In 1976 Bill Koch may have been a surprise silver medalist to the public, but his fellow competitors weren’t surprised. In 1974 Koch had served notice by placing third in the European junior championships, the highest placement ever by a North American competitor. In the two World Cup races leading to the 1976 Olympics, Koch had been in the top three. Koch followed his silver medal in the 30km with a sixth place in the 15km and thirteenth in the 50km.
Koch was born in Brattleboro, Vermont. He was introduced to skiing via ski jumping in the Harris Hill youth program. He was exposed to the Nordic Combined competitions which involve cross country and jumping. He found he liked the cross country skiing better than jumping and he was good at it. Koch would go to the Putney School where he was coached by John Caldwell, the father of U.S. cross country skiing.
After his 1976 success, Bill Koch was a favorite to medal in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. However exercise-induced asthma led to disappointing results. He did not finish the 30km, finished 16th in the 15km, and 13th in the 50km.
After 1980 Koch left the World Cup circuit and competed on the Worldloppet tour which generally consisted of longer distance races. There he was exposed to the skating style of skiing which he immediately embraced and perfected. He returned to the World Cup tour in 1982 with this new technique. The result was a bronze medal at the World Championships and winning the overall World Cup for the season, another first for an American. His success spawned a controversy that would eventually lead to today’s two cross country competitions, classical and freestyle (skating).
Bill Koch would compete in four Olympics and was the United States flag bearer at the 1992 Olympics. After retiring from competition he helped found the youth league that bears his name, the Bill Koch Ski League. This league encourages young people to participate in what Koch believes is a life-long activity that can enrich their lives. Koch always believed that skiing should be fun and that even training for competition should be fun. His influence on the youth program tries to emphasize the fun aspect.
Back in 1976 Koch was featured in a film, The Cross Country Experience, demonstrating some of the fun aspects of his training: skiing powder, going off jumps, tree skiing. All done on skinny XC skis!
Years later when his kids were young, Koch turned his yard into a vicious terrain park to be navigated on skinny skis. Koch said, “After the ramp, you went down a slope, so you had a pretty good head of steam going when you hit the first kicker. You could fly like 35 or 40 feet in the air.”
And guess who used that terrain park? That’s right, Ben Ogden! Ogden grew up in Landgrove, Vermont, only a few miles from Bill Koch, and at age ten was already doing laps on Koch’s park. In an interview with Outside Magazine, Ogden says, “Thanks to those sessions at Bill’s, and to all the time I spent going off jumps and landing wobbly, I’m good on my skis, I’m comfortable in different conditions and in tight corners. That skill set definitely helped at the Olympics when it was warm and slushy, and the snow got worse with each heat of sprints.”
And what does Bill Koch think of his neighbor’s success? In a WCAX interview Koch said, “I could not be more thrilled, and I gotta say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy … I’m speechless. I just started weeping when he crossed that line.”
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