Looking at the start lists four years ago in the Beijing Winter Olympics, Ben Ogden felt as if he didn’t belong on a roster with Norwegian icon Johannes Klæbo. On Tuesday, Ogden stood on a podium with him.
The 25-year-old Landgrove cross-country skier finished 0.87 seconds behind his idol Klæbo in the men’s sprint classic at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games in Italy to win the silver medal — the first cross-country skiing Olympic medal the U.S. men have brought home in 50 years. Norway’s Oskar Vike won bronze.
In the women’s sprint classic on Tuesday, Richmond’s Julia Kern finished in sixth place.
On the Alpine slopes, Waitsfield’s Paula Moltzan teamed up with Jacqueline Wiles to win bronze in the women’s team combined, an event in which two skiers from the same country race in one discipline each — downhill and slalom. The final ranking is determined by adding the times from both races.
With Moltzan skiiing slalom and Wiles on the downhill, the pair finished 0.25 seconds behind gold-medal winners Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber of Austria. Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher won silver.
Americans Breezy Johnson, who won gold in the downhill on Sunday, and Burke Mountain Academy alum Mikaela Shiffrin finished fourth.
Team USA had medaled in five events at press time, according to the team website, and Vermonters have certainly done their share to haul in the hardware. Ogden’s and Moltzan’s wins add a little luster to the University of Vermont, where both athletes skied.
UVM head Nordic coach Patrick Weaver, who coached Ogden for five years and remains on his coaching team, said prior to the Olympics that Ogden wasn’t favored to win a medal but that he certainly had the ability. “He’s just a really gritty skier,” Weaver told Seven Days. “He just goes out and gives it his all.
Fellow Vermonter Bill Koch won the U.S. men’s first-ever — and last, until Tuesday — cross-country skiing medal. The Guilford native took silver in the 30-kilometer race at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Ogden, a six foot four, mustachioed UVM mechanical engineering graduate, grew up skiing in the youth league Koch founded. Odgen’s late father, John, coached in the league.
Ogden and his two sisters attended high school at Stratton Mountain School, one of the premier ski academies in the country, but Odgen said his parents never pressured him to race. “We were never obsessed with results,” Ogden’s mother, Andrea, told Seven Days last month.
On Tuesday, she was in Tesero, Italy, with a contingent of 30 Vermont fans all wearing bright orange hats emblazoned “VT 2026.” Ben skied in qualifier, quarterfinal and semifinal races to earn his spot among the six skiers in the finals. By that time, Andrea and her best friend had stadium seats with a clear view of the start and finish lines, courtesy of NBC, she told Seven Days on Tuesday. She thinks Ben saw them — he waved just before the start.
Three minutes and 40.61 seconds later, when Ben raced across the finish line, “it was dead clear that he was in second,” Andrea said. That time, she was sure he saw her: “It really felt like I was present in that moment for him.”
Four years ago, like her son, she couldn’t believe he was skiing with the world’s best at the Beijing Olympics, she said. But on Tuesday in Italy, he confirmed that he belonged. “He skied shoulder to shoulder with Klæbo for the biggest hills of the day,” Andrea said. “It was beautiful skiing.”
Ken Picard contributed to this report.
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