When the FIS Freestyle World Cup takes place in Deer Valley, Utah, this weekend, two-time Olympic medalist and four-time World Cup champ Hannah Kearney will find herself in an unusual position: standing at the bottom, cheering with the rest of the fans.
The event will be the first major event the Hanover, N.H., native spends time at since retiring from competition. How will it feel?
“I might be sad,” she said while riding a lift at Deer Valley on a powder day last week. “But I might not. I know I’m going to look up there and think, ‘Oh man. I can do that. I can!’ But then I’m going to remember that it takes training. And commitment. And a whole lot of hard work. I bet it is easy from the bottom to look up and think, ‘I can do that.’ But I know what it takes.”
Kearney, who competed from the time she was a young teen, has settled into life in Park City, Utah, attending college fulltime (“You know, I’m that 29-year-old undergrad!”), still exercising to stay fit, and working as one of the celebrated St. Regis Deer Valley ski ambassadors. In that role, Kearney takes guests out for a day on the mountain, showing them great trails, helping them own their turns, and most of all, embracing the absolute fun on the mountain.
Would it surprise you to know that last part is the one she’s working on most? It’s not that she has not loved every minute of her epic career. Rather, she said, it’s that nearly a lifetime of working toward a goal of winning was a different kind of love.
“I’ve always skied with my brain. Now I’m learning to ski with my heart,” she said.
And she does have heart. Part of it, she admits, still belongs to New England.
“I definitely miss it,” she said. “I think to myself — some day I’ll go back there. I’ll settle there. New England will always be a part of who I am.”
But then she sweeps her gloved hand out across the white peaks of Utah, saying, “But this is pretty amazing. I mean, you can get used to living here.”
Kearney took a day to show me around Deer Valley. With giant snowflakes falling around us and a good foot of snow under our feet, we headed out to carve on a variety of trails. I admitted to her, right off, that sometimes I struggled in powder that deep. Her response? “Me too. We can work on it together.”
It came a little easier to her — she being the world-class athlete and all — but there was something about her honesty that charmed me and also helped me settle into working on my powder technique.
At her suggestion, we shifted over to some trails that had less pitch; where I (and supposedly her; she might just be a good sport though) could work on my turns in the deep stuff. With beautiful tree lines to jump in and out of along the trails, Kearney led like a kid on a playground. A few moments into one beautiful run, she hooted and hollered like a kid. I did, too.
“Look at this,” she said, peering through her goggles at the giant flakes of snow falling. “It’s like we’re in a giant snow globe!”
It strikes me that this two-time world champion — this holder of both a gold medal and a bronze medal from the Olympics, this woman who is so recognized that girls everywhere pull braids through their helmets to “be like Hannah,” and a family in Japan told her they named their child after her — is in a way rediscovering skiing. And that just might make her the perfect ski ambassador.
For now, that and her college education is her focus. Kearney was a student at Dartmouth College, but the rigors of competition made that go slowly — and cost a lot of money. Thanks to an amazing program through the U.S. Ski Team, Kearney — like all team athletes — can get her college degree in Utah for free. She’s not quite sure what she wants her degree to lead to yet, but like that skier hooting and laughing on a beautiful run, she’s embracing the journey to see where it takes her.
And no matter where it takes her, New England will be part of her. She’s still a huge Red Sox fan. “One of the biggest challenges of living here? Not being able to get the game on TV,” she said. “It was just what I did before. Turn on the TV at 7 and watch the Sox. It’s harder to do that now.”
Still, she has a very special part of New England there with her — her dog, Finn, who was adopted from a Maine rescue program. “He’s my little part of home; with me all the time,” she said.
This weekend, Kearney will stand at the base and look up, cheering on others. And while reflecting on her past, she’ll also be seeing her future. Because it seems pretty clear: she’ll be hooting and hollering with not her brain but her heart, loving this next step in her mountain journey.
You can ski with Kearney as part of the St. Regis Ski Ambassador Program (see related story). She’ll also still be making visits to her home mountain of Waterville Valley.
