Tricia Mangan skis during the women’s combined downhill event at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on February 17, 2022 in Yanqing, China.
In 2018, Mangan was a last minute addition to the US Olympic team after Jacqueline Wiles was injured on the eve of those Games. Mangan had just finished fourth in the super-G at the 2018 world junior championships and was flying straight to South Korea. She competed in the giant slalom and team event at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games.
But she was unhappy at the time. She personally suffered setbacks and “the bad days were much more devastating,” she said.
After those Games, Mangan decided to retire from World Cup skiing and go to Dartmouth full time. Competing for Big Green’s NCAA Division 1 Ski Team, she was a regular on collegiate ski podiums, particularly in giant slalom. In her sophomore year, she finished third at the 2019 NCAA Ski Championships, a second behind Laurence St. Germain, a Canadian competing for the University of Vermont and also at two Olympics (2018 and 2022).
Dartmouth’s ski team did not compete last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mangan raced anyway – in North America and Europe. It was her last year in college and she wasn’t ready to see her skiing career run out.
Graduating from college last spring, Mangan had a choice. Get a job or go ski racing. Since she was not on the US Ski Team, the latter would be difficult. But she had a different vision than she had in 2018. This time, she knew she wanted to ski race. It wasn’t just something she had done all her life.
“I’m a totally different person than I was four years ago,” she said. “On the one hand, I love skiing and I have so much fun and I’m so motivated every day to go faster.”
And she now knew what it would take to stay focused on her goals.
“The biggest thing school taught me was how to work really hard and really appreciate and take advantage of every opportunity and every time you’re on the hill because in college you don’t. don’t have a lot,” she said.
So last summer she joined the International Ski Racing Academy, a group of top-level alpine racers from around the world.
“One of my teammates is from Bosnia, another from Slovenia, and we have a Canadian,” Mangan said. “They’re a really great band. I feel so lucky that it existed because I couldn’t have made it to this level without them.
One of her teammates, Alice Robinson from New Zealand, is also competing in the 2022 Winter Games.
Mangan also decided to focus on speed events – a big step for someone who grew up in Holimont, a small family ski area near Buffalo without much elevation change.
Eventually, Mangan would like to get into biomedical engineering; she is interested in designing prostheses. But until then, she will focus on the physics of ski racing.
“The Olympics are a very nice reward,” she said of the work she has done so far. “But I’m still excited to keep working.”
Want to follow the athletes of the American team during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games? Visit TeamUSA.org/Beijing-2022-Olympic-Games to view the competition schedule, medal table and results.
