Ski Racing Media’s male Junior of the Year: Bridger Gile

By Published On: August 8th, 2020Comments Off on Ski Racing Media’s male Junior of the Year: Bridger Gile

Bridger Gile jokes that he hit his high point when he was a kid. Indeed, his accomplishments on skis were jaw-droppingly bountiful for someone barely out of kindergarten. By the age of 4, the Aspen native became the youngest person to hike and ski the notoriously steep Highlands Bowl. By the time he was 8, he’d won multiple NASTAR championship titles, had appeared in two Warren Miller films, had forerun the Winter X Games superpipe, could do a back flip and numerous other high-flying tricks, had been featured in a New York Times article and had an Obermeyer jacket named after him.

“I definitely hit my peak when I was young,” says Gile, who, at age 20, joins the ranks of Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety, Julia Mancuso, Tamara McKinney, Steve Mahre and many more as Ski Racing Media’s Junior of the Year, thus proving that his resume highlights are far from finished.

He earns the honor following the best season thus far of his racing career, albeit a season abbreviated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gile kicked things off in December by winning a couple of FIS races against stacked fields in Colorado – a super G at Copper Mountain and a slalom in Steamboat Springs – before taking the NorAM circuit by storm, notching three podiums at Whiteface Mountain, NY, including an alpine combined and giant slalom victory.

It was the eve of his biggest race of the year – the 2020 Junior World Championship GS race in Narvik, Norway – when the lights suddenly went out on the season.

“We were going to bed the night before GS. Our coach knocked on door to say that the race was canceled. Everything was canceled. We flew out the next day,” Gile recalls.

Gile returned home to Aspen, where the pandemic couldn’t keep him off of his skis. He earned his turns skinning every day and made the most of his time away from competition, although perhaps his biggest disappointment was the cancelation of the U.S. Alpine Technical Championships, which were scheduled on home snow at Aspen Highlands and Snowmass in March.

“To race U.S. Nationals at home on that hill would have been awesome,” he says. “I’m super bummed it got cut. Sometimes you go to spring series and do well, so it’s too bad to miss out on that. But if any season was to get cut short, this was a good one. At least I had a good season until it got cut.”

With his NorAm success, Gile is now eligible to compete on the World Cup. He was named to the U.S. Alpine Ski Team’s B squad this summer and has spent the last few weeks dryland training and mountain biking in Park City as well as participating in a couple of on-snow training camps at Copper Mountain and Mount Hood.

“We’ll go back to Hood around the 20th of August if there’s enough snow, but that’s about as far as we know. Nobody really knows what training or the schedule might look like after that,” he says.

Presuming that there is some semblance of a competition circuit this season in spite of the pandemic, Gile plans on easing into the World Cup via the Europa Cup.

“Competing [at the World Cup] in Soelden depends on how much snow time I have going into the year and how fast I’m skiing before that,” he says. “If Beaver Creek happens, I’ll do that one. I’ll see how those go. Doing the Europa Cup, I’ll get used to the depths of that level of competition. Europe is a whole different depth.”

While Gile has shown great talent and ability in every discipline, he is going to make GS his main focus this season.   

“I think I have the biggest understanding of GS, where to put the pressure, the turn,” he says, adding that making it to the top of the world in any discipline is his ideal end goal. “Winning globes would be the ultimate dream. I don’t really care which it’s in. Any or all of them would be pretty sweet. This is a first step. Everything you’ve done, you have to  start fresh with the next step. But it’s good to see the hard work paying off.”

Ski Racing Media Juniors of the Year

1975 –  Leslie Leete Smith          Steve Mahre

1976 –  Christin Cooper              Eric Wilson

1977 –  Heidi Preuss                  David Stapleton

1978 –  Tamara McKinney         Scott Hoffman

1979 –  Tamara McKinney         Mike Farney

1980 –  Noel Lyons                      Mark Tache

1981 –  Brenda Buglione             Tiger Shaw

1982 –  Eva Twardokens             Steve Hegg

1983 –  Eva Twardokens             Jesse Hunt

1984 –  Diann Roffe                     Jesse Hunt

1985 –  Carter Payne                    Tim Curran

1986 –  Hilary Lindh/Krista Schmidinger

1987 –  Sally Knight                    Tommy Moe

1988 –  Heidi Voelker                  Jeremy Nobis

1989 –  Kim Schmidinger           Tommy Moe

1990 –  Julie Parisien                 Ryan North

1991 –  Kathrine Davenport       Paul Casey Puckett

1992 –  Kathrine Davenport       Michael Makar

1993 –  Kristina Koznick            Chip Knight

1994 –  Kjersti Bjorn-Roli          Forest Carey

1995 –  Sarah Schleper             Wisi Betschart

1996 –  Kirsten Clark                Justin Johnson

1997 –  Jonna Mendes              John Minahan

1998 –  Jonna Mendes              Brad Hogan

1999 – Caroline Lalive              Marco Sullivan

2000 –  Julia Mancuso               Marco Sullivan

2001 –  Julia Mancuso               Jake Zamansky

2002 –  Julia Mancuso               Steven Nyman

2003 –  Julia Mancuso               Jeremy Transue

2004 – Lindsey Kildow              Ted Ligety

2005 –  Resi Stiegler                Tim Jitloff

2006 –  Megan McJames          Christopher Beckmann

2007 –  Leanne Smith              Will Brandenburg

2008 – Kiley Staples                Tommy Ford

2009 – Julia Ford                     Tommy Ford

2010 –  Mikaela Shiffrin            Will Gregorak

2011 –  Mikaela Shiffrin            Ryan Cochran-Siegle

2012 –  Mikaela Shiffrin            Ryan Cochran-Siegle

2013 –  Mikaela Shiffrin            Ryan Cochran-Siegle

2014 –  Mikeala Shiffrin

2015 –  Mikaela Shiffrin           AJ Ginnis

2016 –  Mikaela Shiffrin           Erik Arvidsson

2017 – Alice Merryweather/Breezy Johnson     Sam Morse

2018 — Patricia Mangan River Radamus

2019 — AJ Hurt River Radamus

2020 — Keely Cashman. Bridger Gile

Share This Article

About the Author: Shauna Farnell

A Colorado native, Shauna Farnell is a former editor at Ski Racing and former media correspondent for the International Ski Federation. Now a full-time freelance writer, her favorite subjects include adventure sports, travel, lifestyle and the human experience. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, ESPN, Lonely Planet and 5280 among other national and international publications.