“I’m doing this for the passion of the sport and to inspire others.” “I know I’m not going to win, but I want to prove that people my age and girls in general can push the limit. It’s about longevity.”

–Sarah Schleper

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Before there was Lindsey Vonn, before there was Mikaela Shiffrin…there was Sarah Schleper. 

Sarah is a five-time Olympian. She skied in four Olympics for the USA and one for Team Mexico. You heard that correctly, Team Mexico. And what’s most amazing is that she is still competitively skiing. 

During her time with the US Ski Team, Sarah had four World Cup podium finishes and she won seven American championships. In 2005, she finished 5th in the World Cup slalom standings and 17th overall in the world.

Sarah’s journey is truly remarkable. 

She started ski racing relatively late in her life—at the age of 11, unlike most elite ski racers who started around 6 or 7 years old. 

And it was in these adolescent years that Sarah trained under the legendary coach Erich Sailer, who also was Lindsey Vonn’s coach along with dozens of other women on the US Ski Team. 

Sarah’s career with the US Ski Team spanned 15 years, and when she retired in 2011, she did it in style by skiing in her last World Cup run and wearing a beautiful dress. But that’s not all. Mid-way down the run, Sarah picked up her 4-year-old son, Lasse, and carried him through the finish line. You can see this all for yourself on YouTube. I’ll include the link in the blog post.

While many people know about Sarah’s remarkable career, her famous final World Cup race, and her adrenaline-releasing lioness roar before every race, this just scratches the surface of who Sarah is as a person.

I met Sarah a few years ago when my daughter Ruby attended the Erich Sailer Ski Camp at Mt. Hood, Oregon.  Sarah, who was once the athlete being coached by the legendary Sailer, is now a coach herself for so many rising young athletes. 

While there is no doubt that Sarah has a wealth of knowledge to share with her students, what impressed me from the moment I met her was the way people gravitated towards her and how she would motivate people to do things they never thought were otherwise possible. 

Just as she inspired the members of the US Women’s Ski Team for so many years, Sarah inspired me from the moment we met. She’s even become an inspiration to my family. Oftentimes in our household, you’ll hear one of us say to our two children, “What would Sarah do in this situation?”

In this episode, we touched on so many topics. 

Whether you are a ski racer, a young athlete dreaming of the Olympics, a parent of a young ski racer, or simply someone who loves to learn, I promise you this conversation does not disappoint and there is a ton of actionable information to take away.

This introduction can go on and on as there is so much to say about Sarah Schlerper’s impact on the world. 

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the lioness herself, Sarah Schleper.

Wait, there’s more…

About Sarah Schleper from today’s superstars

Sarah Schleper: Vail’s Olympic Mom

Sarah Schleper, Now Representing Mexico

Balancing Motherhood and Another Mountain Run

Sarah Schleper on Facebook

Sarah Schleper on Instagram

Transcript

Dr. Adam Rosh:   Alright. Welcome to the show. Sarah, how are you?

Sarah Schleper:   Good Adam. How are you?

Dr. Rosh:   I’m good. I’m good. It’s great to be talking. I love the noises that I’m hearing on your end here. You have birds and the wild chirping and making noise. You’re in Mexico right now, right?

Sarah:   Yeah. We’re in Puerto Escondido in the state of Oaxaca. I came outside because inside I have the fans going. There might be construction going on outside at some point, but I figured this was the most peaceful spot to do the interview.

Dr. Rosh:   Yeah. It definitely sounds peaceful. I’ve got to tell you. I’ve always known something a little about you and your history, but in preparing for this interview I loved…It was the best week of my life because I got to watch amazing ski videos, read articles that were just coming on the internet back in 2008 and the early days of the internet, and learning all about U.S. skiing, women’s skiing in particular. Learning about your journey. I’m really excited to do this interview. I have so much to ask you, and I doubt I’m going to be able to get through all of it. Maybe we’ll have to continue it some other time. I wanted to start in a place where most people would recognize and know you the most by your signature roar. This is all over the internet here. For those that don’t know, Sarah starts her races often—I don’t know if it’s all the time—with a signature lioness roar. I wanted to talk to you about when did that start and how did it start?

Sarah:   Well, I’m the type of athlete that trains really, really well. So I would be the fastest at training, like beating top World Cup skiers. Then I would get into a race situation and I would think so much about the race and so much expectation and things—I guess things that you learn as you develop as an athlete—that I would just kind of choke almost. So I had a ski technician that was like, “Come on Sarah. Let out a scream before you scream before you go.” He kind of pushed me into that. As we progressed, it became this roar. For me what it did was it basically said I don’t care about anything else right now. I don’t care what people think of me. This is my performance. It just let out all of that anxiety for the performance so that I could do my job, which was ski fast. Actually it’s developed so much for me because I do it every race. At some point, some of the U.S. ski team coaches said I was wasting too much energy and I shouldn’t do it, but we came to realize that it actually did help me. So they said, “Okay, you should do it.” Now when I do it if somebody asks me to do it just for fun or something, it actually produces adrenaline. I feel like that readiness to compete.

Dr. Rosh:   You know what, I never knew that as far as how that got started. So tell me a little bit about the ability to train hard. It sounds like the difference between your performance from training to the actual race was all in your head.

Sarah:   Yeah.

Dr. Rosh:   What did you see as those barriers? Were you ever able to identify what was happening that was causing your performance to change?

Sarah:   Well, in ski racing training you’re going lap after lap on the same course. So the race is actually quite different from training unless you set up a race simulation training. So you’re doing the same course. So you can continually work on a turn to get faster. When you get into a race situation, you only have one shot on that course. So you inspect down it. Normally in training you’re inspecting pretty quick. You just look through it and go down. In a race situation, what’s typical of people is they’ll take a lot of time to look at a course. So you’re thinking, “Oh, how am I going to do this?” So I don’t think I was aware enough to actually consider, “Okay. What can I do to go faster?” I was just like oh that turn looks hard or that looks so much harder. It would be easier than your mind would project the course. So I came to have this kind of routine that I wouldn’t do, and I wouldn’t inspect fast. I would inspect at a pretty steady race. I’d slip through a field of snow. If there was a blind turn or something, maybe I’d hike back up just to have the right direction and know where I was going over the terrain, but I would make it—I mean these are things that you have to learn on your own because everyone’s different.

No friends on race day. We always say no friends on powder day. Well I’d say no friends on race day because I would find myself waiting for my friend to go up the chair lift. Instead of focusing on the performance or what I needed to do to make it a solid performance, I’d be more worried about what my friends were doing. So it was inspect fast, no friends on race day, positive attitude. So you wouldn’t look at the course and be like, “Oh, that looks hard.” You’d look at it