Nancy Fiddler on the Trail to Gold

Nancy racing the women’s 30km freestyle event in the Winter Olympics held in Les Saisies, France in 1992. Photo: Bates College/AP Photo/Tom Smart

Lumi’s head of Marketing, Lauren Honican has had a series of conversations with skiers in the Lumi community, sharing their stories on the Lumi blog. For the third post in this series, we picked up a thread from a previous conversation with the Director of the Women Ski Coaches Association, Kelsey Dickinson, to learn more about their collaboration with a group of female Olympians to launch the Trail to Gold book and fellowship. 

Curious to learn more about the inspiration for both, Lauren caught up with two-time Olympian Nancy Fiddler who lives in Mammoth Lakes, CA. Nancy and her husband Claude also traveled with Lumi to the 2019 Nordic Ski World Championships in Seefeld, Austria. If you’re not already familiar with Nancy’s competitive skiing career, spoiler alert: it was anything but a straight line.

After not even starting to nordic ski until her sophomore year at Bates College, Nancy won every race in what was then the Division 2 league, going on to become an AIAW All American. She graduated from Bates in 1978 and took an eight year break from ski racing before joining the US Olympic Team, where she skied professionally until age 37, earning 14 national championship titles along the way.

Nancy Fiddler racing in the 1989 World Championships in Lahti, Finland. Photo: FasterSkier.com

Throughout Nancy’s skiing career, which spanned from 1976 to 1993, she had zero women ski coaches. 

Fast forward 26 years after Nancy’s final World Cup circuit wrapped up at the World Championships in Falun, Sweden in 1993, Nancy met up with other women Olympic skiers at a gathering hosted during the World Cup Finals in Quebec. Inspired by their time together, they decided to form an organized group and give an annual award to an outstanding female skier competing in the World Cup, starting with Rosie Brennan in 2020.

Shortly after the group formed, the 50th anniversary of the first women’s US Olympic Team for nordic skiing was approaching. Olympian Sue Long Wemyss (Middlebury ‘82) had the idea to celebrate this important milestone, which started with five women in 1972, and over the last 50 years grew to include over 50 women skiers. A committee, which included Nancy, was formed to celebrate the collective journeys of these skiers. The idea of the Trail to Gold book was born, which highlights the historic gold medal won by Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall in the team sprint in 2018 but also features the important stories and memories of the women skiers who paved the way to this possibility. 

The US women’s team in 1992, including Nancy on the left. Photo: SkiTrax.com

If you don’t already have your own copy, Trail to Gold not only highlights the triumphs, but also the huge challenges these skiers faced over the past five decades of US skiing history. The book is organized into two main sections: the first is a series of chapters on topics ranging from the first women’s US Olympic Team for nordic skiing in 1972 to the importance of ski clubs; the second section highlights the individual journey of each skier.

For Nancy, who contributed several chapters to the book, writing about her experiences and learning more about the journeys of the other elite female skiers was a way of getting closure on her skiing career. She wasn’t alone in feeling at times dismissed and dissatisfied that she wasn’t given the best chance to succeed, largely due to a lack of resources, opportunities, and professional coaching for women skiers, which didn’t start to improve until around 2010. 

The process of writing the book helped set her experience in the larger context of US women’s skiing. Not only did she for the first time feel like she really was a piece of that important history, but she felt that she was a part of a real team. These women were building something important together!

Trail to Gold launched a year ago. If your favorite skier still doesn’t have a copy of it on their coffee table, it could be the perfect gift. You can purchase it here.

After the book launch, the initial idea continued to grow into the Trail to Gold Fellowship, which provides talented US women coaches with World Cup coaching experience. In collaboration with the Women Ski Coaches Association and the National Nordic Foundation, a growth structure for women ski coaches that reaches all the way to the top was created. Five experienced women coaches from across the US were selected this fall to participate in the inaugural fellowship and are already getting experience alongside professional US coaching staff throughout this World Cup season.

Lumi guests on the World Championships trip to Slovenia this coming March are supporting the Trail to Gold Fellowship. For each booking, Lumi is donating scholarship support to the Trail to Gold fellows. If you’re interested in joining the trip, there are a couple of spots open. Reach out by January 15 to secure your spot!

Nancy (on the right) and other Lumi guests spectating a race at the 2019 World Championships in Seefeld, Austria.

Lauren asked Nancy about her travels with Lumi to the World Championship in Seefeld, Austria in 2019. It was her first trip to a World Champs since she competed in her last one in 1993. Nancy shared many highlights:

The trip leaders Holly and Raphi were amazing, the hotel overlooking the awards plaza, fun people, a mix of skiing every day, watching amazing races, good food, hanging out with the wax techs in the wax trailer, meeting Jessie Diggins…!

Nancy (in the center) and other Lumi guests rooting for the US and Canadian ski teams on Lumi’s trip to the World Championships in 2019.

If the World Championships are too soon, Lumi’s winter 2024 trips just launched at lumiexperiences.com. Where will you explore on skinny skis next winter? From Austria to New Zealand, we have you covered… Book your trip before March 31, 2023 and receive $300 off per person.