A Year Before Skimo’s Olympic Debut, Veteran U.S. Racer Jessie Young Looks to Close Out Her Career With ‘Last Hurrah’ At World Championships

At 41, Jessie Young balances a family with a full-time job and a ski mountaineering career that has produced a national championship.

How has she managed all this?

“We kind of piece things together and try to be as efficient with our time as we can,” Young said. “We’ve carried our kids a lot of places when they were young.”

Young and husband Max Taam of Aspen, Colorado, have two sons — Ryder, 6, and Bridger, 3. When she’s not occupied with the children or racing, Young is a senior planner for Pitkin County Open Space & Trails, working in land conservation, public access and trail building. The job allows her to work remotely, so she can keep it up with her busy training and competition schedule.

Young’s focus this season is doing whatever she can to help the U.S. secure a spot for the sport’s debut at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Skimo, in which athletes race by ascending a snow-covered mountain on foot and then skiing down it, will have men’s and women’s sprint events and a mixed relay next year.

“It’s definitely an exciting new element, for sure,” Young said of the Olympic debut. “How do we optimize for the mixed relay, because that’s really our best chance for getting a spot? Now, with that team goal in mind, I think there’s more intention around, what can we do to really optimize for that?”

Currently, Young is in Europe racing on the world cup circuit and preparing for the ISMF World Championships that take place March 2-8 in Morgins, Switzerland.

Having competed in three previous world championships, Young’s best individual finish was 13th place in 2017.

“It would have been cool to break into the top 10 at some point,” Young said. “These Europeans get way more race experience. You were kind of thrown into the mix with all these super-fast Europeans that are doing this every weekend at a different level of competition than we were used to, for sure.”

This year will likely be her final season on the world cup circuit, though she doesn’t plan to stop racing entirely.

“I think in this race format, this would be my last hurrah, my first and last hurrah,” Young said. “I think that there’s more racing to be done in the longer-format stuff and the grand course-type races, for sure. There’s definitely a lot of those on my bucket list.”

Young said she had no intention of doing the world cups this season until she got a call from Sarah Cookler, the head of sport for USA Skimo. Cookler asked Young to attend the national camp to see what she had left in the tank.

Clearly there’s still a bit of fuel left. At last month’s U.S. championships, Young won the women’s sprint, placed third in the individual race and finished fourth in the mixed relay with partner John Gaston.

Young entered skimo back in 2011. She recalled finishing close to last in that year’s Audi Power of Four Race Series, an annual competition in Aspen for serious and recreational athletes.

“I definitely wasn’t that fast,” Young said. “They were shutting down the racecourse, and there was nobody there. It was dark, and my mom was waiting for me. That was kind of my start to the sport, and kind of went from there.”

Young found the perfect sport to align with her interests. Her love for the mountains can be a helpful distraction from the physical toll of competing in skimo.

“You get to go experience (the mountain terrain) and race through it and take it all in,” she said. “What I like about it is it kind of combines so many different elements. I think that’s where I can kind of dig deep and get through some of that stuff that might be pretty uncomfortable.”

Young continued to dig deep even during her two pregnancies. While she took some time off after having both of her kids, she said she never stepped away from the sport. She still trained during both of her pregnancies, which she said was a great way to stay active.

While her elite-level skimo career nears its close, Young expressed optimism about U.S. prospects in the sport going forward. She pointed out that in recent years, the national team has been able to travel to Europe and stay on the world cup circuit together.

“The more race experience, the better,” Young said. “I think that there will be improvement in our rankings as a team over time.”

Bob Reinert spent 17 years writing sports for The Boston Globe. He also served as a sports information director at Saint Anselm College and Phillips Exeter Academy. He is a contributor to usaskimo.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.