The Silver Medal 50 Years in the Making
Ryan Cochran-Siegle journey to the podium started on a ski hill in his grandparent’s backyard.
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The first thing Ryan Cochran-Siegle did when he got to the bottom of the Super G ski course in Beijing was call his mother. They Facetimed, and soon Ryan and his mom Barbara Ann Cochran were looking at each other, laughing. It wasn’t long before the laughs turned into tears. There are few people alive who knew what Ryan was feeling at that moment, on the cusp of an Olympic medal; Barbara is one of them.
Ryan had just barreled down “The Rock,” as the run is known, in one minute and 19.98 seconds. It put him in position to win a silver medal, just four hundredths of a second behind Austrian skier Matthias Mayer—one of the greatest racers of all time. There are surprise stars at every Olympics, figures who rise to the occasion and make a podium to the amazement of those watching at home. In one sense, Ryan fits the billing as Beijing’s underdog champion perfectly: He hails from small town Vermont, couldn’t afford to travel to youth tournaments, and overcame a devastating neck injury a year before the Games. But on the other hand, his name is Cochran, after all. And in the world of skiing, that’s as close as you can get to a birthright. Almost 50 years to the day before his silver medal, his mom had won gold. You couldn’t write a story like this if you tried.
To trace the origins of Ryan’s silver medal, you must go back to 1961. That’s when Mickey and Ginny Cochran, Ryan’s grandparents, installed a rope pull on the hill behind his home in Richmond, Vt. They taught their four kids how to ski there and soon were operating a small ski hill, called the “Cochran Ski Area,” for the community. Neighbors received ski lessons for free. Lift tickets barely cost more than that. “It was a magical place,” Barbara Ann’s brother Bob told the New York Times. The family continues to operate the hill to this day, and thousands of Vermonters have learned to ski on its slopes—many of them taught by Barbara Ann, maybe the most overqualified ski instructor ever.
For all that the Cochran Ski Area is, it is not the typical breeding ground of Olympic skiers. There are no lifts, only rope pulls, and just a handful of runs. There aren’t snow machines, so skiers must navigate ice, rocks, and tree roots—something opposing skiers hypothesize gave Ryan elite “touch” on skis. The hill features a measly 350 vertical feet drop; “The Rock” in Beijing, by comparison, features nearly a 3,000-foot descent. There’s something magic in those hills, though, and Barbara Ann and all her siblings made the Olympics in the 1970s. Soon, the “Skiing Cochran’s” had kids of their own, and they followed the well-worn path from Vermont to the Olympics as well.
Ryan grew up skiing with those Olympic-bound cousins on their local hill, and at the end of every ski day, they played a game: whoever could build up the most speed won. Once, when he was eight, Ryan reached the bottom but couldn’t slow down. He went straight through the window of the lodge. He still has the scar.
When you hear that one family has sent so many people to the Olympics, you might expect there to be unbearable pressure and crushing expectations. But the Cochran’s secret is as simple as enjoying their sport. “He was hoping that we would experience skiing as just a heck of a lot of fun. Those were his words,” Barabra Ann said of her father on The Vermont Conversation podcast. “But he also wanted us to learn some life lessons. He wanted us to realize that, in order to do well [and] get better at something, you really had to work hard at it and put effort into it. And he felt that it took not only the hard work but paying attention to details … to get yourself better.”
That philosophy helped carry Ryan through the last 13 months, during which he recovered from a brutal crash in a World Cup race in Austria. An emergency helicopter lifted him off the mountain to treat him for a fracture in his neck. For a sport as mentally demanding as skiing, some thought he’d never be able to recapture his same level of aggression. But he got himself back on the mountain, and then he did what is in his family’s blood.
He didn’t just ski. He had a heck of a time doing it. Just look how far it got him.
Speaking with NBC after his race, Ryan said, “I was trying to embrace that it’s an Olympic moment, and you never know what’s going to happen. You’ve just got to give yourself an opportunity to go out there and—” he added, surely thinking of racing down Vermont’s Green Mountains with his cousins, “have fun.”
🏈 If the Rams win the Super Bowl this Sunday, Sean McVay’s speech before the NFC Championship—delivered with some help from Von Miller—will live in Los Angeles lore forever.
😎 You didn’t really think I’d make it through this entire newsletter without mentioning Joe Burrow, did you? Of all the pieces written this week about the beloved quarterback, this one from The Athletic that explores our national love affair is my favorite.
⛳ A few years ago, golfer Morgan Hoffmann left the PGA Tour after a muscular dystrophy diagnosis. Nobody knew what happened to him. Golf Digest tracked Hoffman down in Costa Rica, and…well, you’re going to have to read the story to believe what they found.
🏂 In 2006, Lindsey Jacobellis’ name became etched in Olympic lore—for all the wrong reasons. 16 years later, she finally won the gold medal that was so nearly hers. Who doesn’t love a redemption story?
⚽ Check out the celebrations after Senegal won the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament. The day after the game was declared a national holiday. But what I love most is what star player Sadio Mané once said about fame: “Why would I want 10 Ferraris, 20 diamond watches, or two planes? I built schools, a stadium, we provide clothes, shoes, food for people who are in extreme poverty. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me.”
