March 22, 2018 – As the 2017/18 ski season winds down, so do the international racing careers of Kikkan Randall and Liz Stephen, two of the longest standing women of the current US National Cross Country Ski Team. The duo have raced on the world stage for a combined total of thirty years; eighteen for Randall and twelve for Stephen.

They were recently honoured with a victory lap at the FIS World Cup finals in Falun, Sweden where a packed stadium celebrated their careers as Randall’s son Breck joined in along with Sweden’s Anna Haag and Finland’s Aino Kaisa (Aikku) Saarinen who is also retiring.

Randall was the lone female on the US World Cup team back in 2006 and was the spark that helped build and evolve the squad into the current American powerhouse women’s team that Stephen joined along the way.

They leave an amazing legacy behind and contributed to lifting US cross-country skiing to new heights of accomplishment while establishing a culture of team spirit and support that resulted in Olympic gold for Randall and Jessie Diggins in the Team Sprint at Pyeongchang 2018… a storybook ending to Randall’s amazing career (look for a separate post on Liz Stephen’s stellar career).

Randall, who was actually born in Salt Lake City, began her career in Alaska as an APU junior skier at age 16 “…when it was called Gold 2002.” She chose to continue with Jim Galanes’ program after high school and started taking classes at APU in 2001. Erik Flora took over in 2007 and APU’s record of success is renowned in Nordic circles around the globe.

Randall won her first national title “…the day after my 19th birthday in January 2002 in Bozeman, MT. It was the freestyle Sprint and that helped me qualify for the 2002 Olympics. It was also when I made the decision to forgo NCAA eligibility to pursue my international goals full time.”

She was named to the US Ski Team as part of the development squad in 2000 until 2005 but the team was cut for the 2005-2006 season and Randall was part of the US women’s team at the 2006 Torino Games where she finished a record 9th in the freestyle Sprint. At those same Games her Canadian pals Chandra Crawford won gold and Beckie Scott and Sara Renner won team sprint silver.

For the 2006-2007 World Cup season she was renamed to the national team, but to the A-squad, and so her rise to stardom began. She was the only woman competing on the World Cup full-time that season and most of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 as well. Pete Vordenberg was head coach and in 2006 Chris Grover became the US team’s sprint coach while Matt Whitcomb was named Head Development Coach.

Randall earned her first World Cup sprint podium in January of 2007 at Rybinsk, Russia and soon after began an avalanche of stunning results. The next year she won her first World Cup sprint race in Rybinsk and would go on to claim 13 World Cup victories during her career including 29 podiums – read Randall’s original Race Tails report on her first WCup win here.

Just prior she was the first U.S. woman to record a top-5 World Cup finish in x-c (March 7, 2006, a skate sprint in Borlaenge, Sweden) and as mentioned she was the first U.S. woman to break into the top 10 in an Olympic cross-country race (Feb. 22, 2006 in Pragelato Plan, the Olympic venue an hour west of Torino).

In 2008 she married Canadian xc skier, Jeff Ellis, who cut his teeth in journalism at SkiTrax, and later joined the Cross-Country PR & Communications team at FIS becoming the voice of the World Cup as their post-race interviewer, and the point man for their innovative “Inside the Fence” video series.

Then in 2009 Randall won her her first FIS Nordic World Championship medal at Liberec, Czech Republic, capturing silver in the freestyle Sprint. Those championships were an amazing milestone as Team USA took home six medals courtesy of Todd Lodwick, who captured two Nordic Combined golds, Billy Demong, who won Nordic Combined gold and bronze, and Lindsay Van, who won gold in the inaugural women’s ski jumping debut.

By then the US women’s team was coming together with Randall and US  head coach Pete Vordenberg creating the framework and building blocks with skiers like Stephen, Holly Brooks, Laura Valaas, and Morgan Arritola. Later Jessie Diggins, Sadie Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Ida Sargent, Rosie Brennan and others would come on board.

In 2010 Grover took over as head coach and along the way Whitcomb became the head coach of the women’s team that was starting to raise eyebrows both at home and abroad.

Randall’s leadership was key as she shared a Team Sprint World Cup podium first with Bjornsen in 2011 at Düsseldorf, Germany, and then with Diggins in 2012 at Milan, Italy and again in Quebec, City later that year… formidable!

In 2012 Randall made history again winning her first Sprint Cup globe, and defended her title for two consecutive years in 2013 and 2014 against the best sprinters in the world.

The Team’s first women’s 4x5k relay podium was also in 2012 at Gallivare, SWE as Brooks, Randall, Stephen and Diggins claimed bronze. They repeated in Lillehammer, Norway the next year with Bjornsen replacing Brooks… and again at Lillehammer in 2015 and finally at Nove Mesto, Czech Republic in 2016.
Team USA’s signature women’s relay socks, which Randall bought at a convenience store in Germany after the 2012 Tour de Ski, became the talk of the town. They made their first debut “….in a night sprint that Liz and I did in Italy and then the first World Cup was the Milan team sprint with Jessie and I,” recalled Randall.

Randall and Diggins hit the big time in 2013 winning Team Sprint gold at the FIS Nordic Worlds in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Randall’s third Worlds medal was a bronze in the freestyle Sprint in 2017 at Lahti, Finland.

Her infectious spirit, passion and “fun” attitude permeated the team and in 2015 they released a brilliant “Uptown Funk” video just before the Falun 2015 Nordic World Championships sparking other teams to do the same.

Just prior to her final World Cup season in fall 2017, the US team took delivery of their first wax truck, that became a reality following the work of Randall and Liz Arky as the dynamic duo shared the team’s story with donors who signed on to the dream – and it paid off big time.

The storybook ending to Randall’s incredible career saw her win the first-ever Olympic gold medal for the US cross-country ski team in the Team Sprint with Diggins at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang. “Team work makes the dream work,” tweeted Randall.

“The most satisfying part of winning an Olympic gold medal has been finally earning the validation for all that our US Cross Country team has been working for, and believing in, since that first women’s cross country team competed in 1972!  It’s so fitting that it happened in a team event because this has always been a joint effort.

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“We are incredibly proud and honored to have been able to represent USA out on the course that night and finally show our country and the world that we can compete with the best,”  Randall told Trax post Games. Apparently, it runs in the family as Randall’s Aunt Betsy and Uncle Chris Haines went to the Olympics to compete in cross-country races, he in 1976 and she in 1980.

Now a 5-time Olympian she has been on the FIS Athletes’ Commission and was recently elected to the IOC Athlete Commission for the next eight years. Randall is also the President of Fast & Female USA while working on an MBA at APU, along with motivational speaking and sponsor work. She and her husband Jeff celebrated the birth of their son Breck in April, 2016 and according to Randall, “there’s nothing better than coming home to his smiling face.”

What a career!