AVSC, CRMS alumna Oldham wins Nordic national championship
Kate Oldham, center, stands atop the podium after winning the 10K freestyle event at the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday. Oldham is a graduate of Colorado Rocky Mountain School and an alumna of Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club.
Courtesy of Stephanie Burgoon
Rich Allen, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer Jan 4, 2025
The Roaring Fork Valley’s newest Nordic star has arrived.
On Thursday, Carbondale native Kate Oldham became the latest local to win a national championship on the skinny skis, claiming the 10K freestyle race to open the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday — leaning on a month of training and home cooking to prepare.
“It feels like a dream,” Oldham said via phone from Anchorage on Friday. “I woke up and I was like, ‘Is this still real?’ It’s super rewarding. I’ve been Nordic skiing for a lot of years, have been training for pretty high-level competition for a long time. When you make a jump, you never really know when it’s going to happen but it always feels great.”
Oldham, now a senior at Montana State University, graduated from Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale in 2020 and is a product of Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club. She followed Hailey Swirbul in 2023 as recent local products to claim national titles.
The victory comes somewhat out of the blue for Oldham, striking gold in her first competition of the season. Instead of taking part in some college level and SuperTour events early in the year, she’s been at home in Carbondale training.
“It’s not at all the traditional plan, but she wanted to focus on her mental health and being happy and being in a good space and her training,” August Teague, AVSC Nordic director and one of Oldham’s former coaches, said. “So she stayed here in the Roaring Fork Valley with friends and family and really focused on the training throughout the holiday period.”
Oldham added that being at home let her be more relaxed about training, getting to work with her old teammates and coaches and take on the local trails she grew up on. Comfort has been a constant in her success, both she and Teague said — she started her collegiate career at Middlebury in Vermont, but between the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and being on the East Coast, she found better traction after landing with the Bobcats in Bozeman, back in the western mountains.
kate oldham
Kate Oldham, seen in a competition during the 2023-24 season, skipped the first few races this season to train and rest ahead of nationals. The move paid off, taking top honors in her first competition of the year and claiming a national title.
Courtesy of Montana State Athletics
“I just noticed that when I’m focusing on doing fun skiing and when I’m really loving the training, that works well for me,” Oldham said. “I think it’s really hard to relax about the details of training and racing because you do want to be at the highest level you can. But at the same time, finding the balance is a lot easier said than done and I think that the more you can succeed while doing that the more confident you can be making those decisions.”
Oldham was hitting all the benchmarks in her training, but that only goes so far until you’re in the heat of competition, she said. Evidently, those good feelings from training were true-to-form.
In the interval-start race, Oldham posted the fastest lap times on both laps, finishing the course in 24 minutes and 29.8 seconds, 11.2 seconds faster than second-place Kendall Kramer, a member of the University of Alaska Fairbanks team. Erica Laven of the University of Utah finished 28.5 seconds behind Oldham to round out the podium in the field of 181 women.
Oldham is a former junior national champion and a Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association regional champ, but no other accolade has propelled her standing in the sport more — likely earning her some of the first World Cup starts of her career and putting her firmly in contention for a selection to the world championships in Trondheim, Norway at the end of February/beginning of March.
Oldham said it’s all about opening as many doors as possible for her post-graduation from Montana State. She said there’s a lot to be decided going forward, but she knows she wants to ski professionally next season.
“I would like to have as many options as possible without knowing exactly what I’m going to do, so having as many good results as I can get this season will help with that,” Oldham said. “I do want to ski pro next year and I don’t know exactly what that’s looking like yet, but the more doors open, the more options I have and the better chance I have to find a path that works well for me and leads to success.”
But before all that she has more work to do — both in her senior campaign with the Bobcats and even this weekend in Anchorage. Oldham is slated to compete in three more events through the weekend: a classic sprint on Saturday; classic 20K on Sunday and a state sprint on Tuesday. How Oldham does in those races will go a long way toward qualifying for worlds, she said.
“Staying focused this week and just enjoying that I do have this good result under my belt takes a little bit of pressure off qualifying for U23 worlds — which was one of my goals for the week,” Oldham said. “So (I’m just) not getting too caught up in what could happen this season and just waiting until I have the options in front of me.”
