American Paula Moltzan is surging into the 2021-22 season fresh on the heels of her career-best season to date. Last season, the eight-year veteran of the alpine tech team scored seven top-10 finishes capped by a strong late-season surge finishing with a season-best fifth-place slalom finish in Åre and seventh-place finish at the slalom World Cup Finals in Lenzerheide.
The 27-year-old Minnesota native credits her off-season training regimen and inspiration drawn from teammate Nina O’Brien for last year’s success, which she hopes to repeat this season.
Moltzan became the first American woman to win slalom gold at junior world championships in 2015. While studying pre-med at the University of Vermont, she became the 2017 NCAA individual national slalom champion in her freshman year. However, her transition back to the World Cup stage during the 2019-20 season initially came with some difficulty.
“The year previous (2019-20) I would call one of my worst seasons just mentally and physically,” she said. “I had to reset my frame of mind going from college to World Cup, and that’s obviously a different battle when you’re kicking out of a world cup gate versus a college gate. I think that kicked me into a reset mode”.
Part of that reset phase came in the form of an improved level of strength and fitness earned after mountain biking, road cycling, and twice-daily workouts in the gym. “I spent a lot of time working on my fitness as Covid (restrictions) accelerated that. I got more time in the gym than ever. Our programming started on March 1 and ended on Sept. 1. That’s by far the largest block I’ve ever spent in a conditioning period.”
Moltzan also drew inspiration from fellow teammate Nina O’Brien who pushed her to be a better GS skier. “I’m more of a slalom skier and she’s definitely more of a GS skier. That helped a lot because we could talk about what we were working on, and she was able to give me tips on how to make my GS better. … She’s so good, she’s an incredible teammate!”
Moltzan’s results and success in the 2020-21 season validated the approach. Posting a career-best 303 FIS points, she was most successful in the parallel event, celebrating her first podium finish, second at Lech/Zuers, and skiing to a strong fourth-place finish at the World Championships in Italy’s Cortina d’Ampezzo.
“In my blood, I’m a slalom skier, and parallel GS is just a tighter form of slalom. I think the key is that I have the tempo to keep up with it pretty-high pace GS and I think that’s really helpful. I’m also hyper-competitive and really hate losing, so when you can see your competitor right next to you it’s strict motivation.” She was unfazed concerning the highly debated and often maligned parallel event. “It’s hard to say if it’s fair or not, you have to take advantage of those situations. You just have to make the best of it and when you get the short end of the stick you just have to push on through and try your hardest because that’s what the other person is doing”.
Soelden prep
Moltzan has carried last season’s momentum into the off-season and is now looking to parlay that head of steam into this weekend’s season-opener in Soelden. The alpine tech veteran reported a shorter block of time in the gym this summer but was nevertheless confident assuring: “I know I built such a good foundation last year. I was able to build off that faster than I had ever in any summer.”
A late-summer training camp with her women’s tech teammates is also bolstering her preseason readiness as she is capitalizing on the synergy between the teammates.
“That (camp) was extremely productive, and our team grew by one. AJ Hurt is now part of our team, so we are three girls, all very competitive and aggressive GS skiers who push each other, so I would say that’s good prep.”
She added: “The prep period for Soelden has been extremely productive and I’d call successful as we had so many good days on snow, and we made a lot of progress as a team and as individuals going into the race. I have high hopes for our team.”
But when asked if she had specific hopes for Soelden, she wasn’t ready to lay down specifics: “I have never really been a person to set up numbers goal in my career as it can deter me from the process. I’m just looking to kick out of the gate with all the prep that I did this fall and this summer and just ski with all the confidence I have. I’ll stick to the basics, do my best, and see what happens on the numbers side”.
Olympics dreams
Moltzan, a three-time world championship participant (Vail/Beaver Creek, 2015; Are, Sweden, 2019; and Cortina, 2021), is not anticipating any change in training or racing strategies in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics next February, casually remarking, “No, everything is exactly the same. It’s pretty boring. We just like to keep everything basically as normal as possible. No one is guaranteed a ticket to the Olympics and the only way to get there is to qualify by racing. So, you kind of just put your head down. I have no intent to think about the Olympics until January when the team is named.”
When Moltzan steps into the start gate, she will be marking her 47th career World Cup appearance as part of the U.S. women’s tech team. Perhaps at no point in her career has she been more poised to hit the snow hard, punch gates, and find green lights at the finish line.
About the Author: Rick Bachand
