Five Dartmouth Engineering Alumni Are Winter Olympics Contenders

AJ Hurt sets her sights on Milano-Cortina. (Photo by Dustin Satloff)

AJ Hurt '23  

• Slalom, giant slalom
• Carnelian Bay, California
• Major: Engineering Sciences
• 2022 Olympic team; 2024 World Cup (Slovenia), 3rd place, slalom; 2024 World Cup (Andorra), 3rd place, giant slalom; three-time US Alpine champion

When I started: I grew up in the mountains of Lake Tahoe. I began downhill skiing at around 2 years old. My father is on ski patrol at Palisades Tahoe and that made it easy to be on the mountain a lot. It always felt like home to me.  

How Dartmouth shaped my skiing career: I love skiing so much, but I also love learning and school. Dartmouth's four-term system has allowed me the flexibility to continue my education while I pursue my passion of ski racing. Every professor and advisor I have had at Dartmouth has supported me in my pursuits, and for that I am so appreciative.

What I hope to accomplish: I hope to continue ski racing for as long as possible. When that career is over, I will begin a career in the field of electrical or mechanical engineering.

Toughest part about training: Dry land training. I love playing games and sports, but the monotony of lifting weights or riding on an exercise bike is not my favorite thing. As far as ski training goes, I love it!

Most exciting highlight in my career: When I podiumed in grand slalom and slalom. 

I'm most proud of: Those podiums. And I am very proud of making the Olympic team of 2022. 

How I deal with jitters: I try to keep it light and fun. When everything is so serious, it can make the jitters worse for me.

My superstitions: I think that I will, superstitiously, not discuss my superstitions! 

What I love most about skiing: I love the rhythm of skiing, both on and off the course. It is a very free feeling. 

Sam Macuga '23 (Photo by US Ski Team)

Sam Macuga '23 

• Nordic Ski Jumping
• Park City, Utah
• Major: Electrical Engineering
• World championship teams, 2021 and 2023; 10th in team normal hill, 2023 world championships; 12th in normal hill, 2023 Intercontinental Cup; six Top 10 finishes, 2022 Continental Cups; two Top 15 finishes, 2022 FIS Cup

How I got started: When my family moved to Park City in 2007, I did not ski because we were moving from Texas. But winter sports are super woven into the community, and following the 2002 Olympics that Park City hosted, the Youth Sports Alliance offered an afterschool program in all the elementary schools in the area, where any kid—even if you had no experience or couldn't afford it—could try any winter sport. That's how I learned how to ski—just a couple of afterschool Fridays, go up to the mountain. I liked the little bumps on the side of the turtle runs and decided to try ski jumping.

What I love about ski jumping: It's kind of the cliché of our sport, but flying is definitely the coolest part. It's the whole reason you do it and the reason you keep at it. There's nothing like when you hit the takeoff just right and feel yourself gaining height and speed over the knoll. That's why you keep going back up: The hill never changes, but you just want to get better and better and really feel more air underneath your skis every time.

How Dartmouth shaped my athletic career: Ski jumping is not a collegiate sport, so it's really hard to balance school and being a professional athlete. It's a winter sport, but we also have a summer circuit. Most athletes on the circuit either don't do school at all or do it online. I wanted to do engineering, and I didn't want to get a degree in engineering online. One of my old teammates, who was going to Dartmouth at the time, told me about the D Plan. This helped me find electrical engineering and a whole new group of people to really reach out to. I feel I actually have a life outside of ski jumping.

What inspired me to try to make the team: When I made the national team at 15, it was a huge surprise. I hadn't even looked at criteria. Then in 2018, I was invited to compete in Olympic trials. That was crazy because all of a sudden, I technically became an alternate. Going into this year, it's still a reach. It has always worked for me to keep doing it and have fun, and now I'm trying to do it at the highest level.

What I hope to accomplish: Right now, we have three spots, but we're trying hard to qualify a fourth. If we do, it'd be the first time ever that we sent a full women's team to the Olympics. We really want to build the United States into a country that is competitive in ski jumping.

The toughest part about training: If you're trying to be an Olympic athlete, you're an Olympic athlete every day. You have to make sure you don't get hurt doing stupid things. You have to take care of your body. The grind never stops. And there isn't a lot of ski jumping infrastructure in the United States. Almost our entire team lives in Norway. I'm not going to complain about living in Norway and traveling the world, but it's not leisure travel—you're training, and it's intense.

What I expect to be most challenging if I make the team: The pressure. It's already a lot of pressure even getting there, and once you get there, it's a lot more pressure to perform. Everybody watching expects medals every time. I think sometimes people forget that making the Olympics itself is a huge achievement.

How I deal with jitters: Ski jumping is so quick that it's easy to get caught up in all the thousands of things you want to change. I like to pick one or two things to accomplish in a jump. At the top, before I'm about to go, I say these goals under my breath, like, "OK, I'm going to bring my feet closer in the air and that's all I'm going to focus on." Not thinking about how important the results are or where exactly I want to place usually works because then I do what I'm trying to accomplish.

Tricia Mangan (Photo by Dustin Satloff)

Tricia Mangan '19

• Super-G, downhill, giant slalom, and super combined
• Buffalo, New York
• Major: Mechanical Engineering
• 2022 Olympic team, 11th in super combined; 2018 Olympic team, 9th in mixed team; 2023 world championships, 23rd in downhill

How I started: I grew up on a very small hill in New York and started when I was two. I ski raced with all my siblings. I never dreamed about the Olympics. I just was incredibly competitive and didn’t like when my twin brother beat me. It was never a crazy dream. It was more just trying to get faster every year.

How Dartmouth shaped my skiing career: I was cut from the US Ski Team after my first Olympics, so I skied for Dartmouth for two years and then raced as an independent athlete. Then I qualified for my second Olympics. Then a year later, I requalified for the US Ski Team. It was a very all-over path, but I am so thankful for my time at Dartmouth. After that, I felt like, "OK, I have my college degree. I still absolutely love ski racing. I'm going to commit 100 percent to this." That's where I am now.  

What I hope to accomplish: To have my best World Cup season, be good enough to qualify for the Olympics, and perform to my very best potential there. This is the most competitive the US has ever been for Alpine skiing in my career. On the women's side, our team is absolutely crushing it, which is so awesome and exciting, but it also makes qualifying really hard.

My two previous Olympic experiences: My first, I was very young, the very last alternate—literally named to the team three days before opening ceremonies. I felt I didn't deserve to be there, even though I'd had my best World Cup results. I was so excited, but when I got there it was just stress, stress, stress. But the opening ceremonies were so unbelievably special. Then in Beijing, the opening ceremony was intense. You wait for a long time with the other athletes and can't really see what’s happening in the stadium until you walk through the door. It feels like this big moment all at once.

How I deal with jitters: Sometimes, I get too excited too early, which uses a lot of energy. I use music to calm my mind, where I'm very focused, not distracted. I need to be in this really hyped-up state in the gate, but if it happens too early, it's exhausting.  

What I love most about skiing: Racing. It's the intensity, the pressure. It's amazing. I have not felt that way in anything else I've ever done.  

Sam Morse (Photo by Dustin Satloff)

Sam "Moose" Morse '20

• Downhill, super-G
• Park City, Utah
• Major: Mechanical Engineering
• 2017 world juniors downhill champion; World Cups, two Top 10 and eight Top 20 finishes 

How I started: I grew up at Sugarloaf ski resort in Maine, where my parents worked. All my friends ski raced. My brother ski raced. We went to a ski academy, so we'd ski every single day and then did school in the afternoon.  

What I love about skiing: You have this wide-open slope in front of you, and it just feels really freeing. The better you get at it, the longer you do it, the stronger you are, the more things you can do, the faster you can go, the bigger turns you can make. You always want to try to find your own glass ceiling. Seeing what I'm capable of motivates me.

How Dartmouth shaped my skiing career: The whole term system—without it, a lot of us just wouldn't go to college. I get to finish up a season in March, then, good or bad, I go to Dartmouth and study for ten weeks and don't have to talk to anybody about ski racing. It's a brilliant break from that world, a good change of scenery. It's really hard to jump back in with the brainiacs of the world, but it challenges my brain in a different way.  

How I deal with jitters: I try not to bury that energy. I try to use it. You make a plan of what your route down the hill will be. I boil that down to a couple technical focuses that I turn into kind of a mantra—two or three words that can be as simple as "forward" and "downhill hand" or "forward and aggressive" or "catch the turn early." I try to focus on what I need to do to execute X, Y, and Z.

If I make the team, the most challenging part will be: Obviously, a lot more eyes and a lot more pressure. This would be my first Olympics, so I would just be super grateful to be there. I don't think it would be that much harder than the World Cup tour as that is such a grind. The Olympics are in February, later than a lot of our races, so it's more in the sun. Also, the fields aren't as big. Each nation can start only up to four people; in the World Cup, we could have ten guys racing from each country. That changes the whole vibe.  

Kyle Negomir (Photo by Dustin Satloff)

Kyle Negomir '23

• Downhill, super-G
• Littleton, Colorado
• Major: Biomedical Engineering
• 2023 and 2024 World Cups, competed in super-G and downhill; 2023 world championships, 17th place, super-G

When I started: I was a year and a half old. About as early as I could walk, my parents put me on skis.  

How Dartmouth shaped my skiing career: Being afforded the freedom and flexibility to pursue what I love doing and have a career doing it—and still get an education—that really does help my skiing. I consider myself incredibly fortunate that the school is willing to work around this hectic schedule and let us keep chipping away at it. There's a long life after skiing, and I want to be able to do other really hard things intellectually.  

What I’m most proud of: Skiing's an expensive sport. My parents sacrificed a lot to help me get here. When I first made the national team, I was finally able to get enough sponsorships and fundraising to take that burden off them and support my own dream.  

What I love about skiing: Being able to dedicate 100 percent to try to be the best in the world at something. It's super special to shape essentially my whole life around pursuing this one goal that's almost impossible. Fortunately for me, I get to do it with my best friends in cool parts of the world. I try to not ever take that for granted.

Toughest part about training: Navigating injuries. When I started breaking in as a professional, I crashed and tore a couple of ligaments in my knee and shoulder, broke every bone through my hand, and wasn't able to ski race again for two and a half years. Spending years on the sidelines, it is mentally draining to keep believing in yourself when you don’t know if you're going to get a chance to do it again. That makes it more rewarding when it does happen.

How I deal with jitters: Everyone gets nervous. I think if you're not, that means you don't care about it. The more you deal with it, the more you're able to control that side of your nervous system. No magic tricks. I'm still figuring it out.

What I hope to accomplish: I'd like to be there supporting my country. It's one race where you don't have any season-long standings or consistency to worry about, so you can really go for broke. That's the beauty of it. You can take a lot of risks and put everything on the line to chase that medal. It's kind of medal or bust. I think that has to be the mindset going in.