Cross-country skier Gus Schumacher has a lot on his shoulders these days. The 25-year-old was the first American man to ever reach the World Cup podium in a 20km freestyle mass start race last February, when he took home silver. The breakout star is now seen as one of the best chances for the U.S. men’s cross-country ski team to end their 50-year medal drought at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. As if that wasn’t enough on his plate, the Alaskan is also taking on climate change.
Gus Schumacher: Meet the Athlete
Schumacher lives a value-driven existence — as a person, an athlete, and an advocate. He said he feels most fulfilled when his actions match up with his principles. “Care for my world and my environment and recognizing that I am just a piece in our whole global ecosystem. I want to act in a way that feels like it works with the way the world is,” Schumacher told NBC Olympics in August.
The Olympian is a member of the Athlete Alliance for Protect Our Winters (POW). The non-profit is a climate advocacy organization that works to mobilize the outdoor community, including professional athletes like Schumacher, to create solutions and enact change. In 2022, he, along with teammate and Olympic champion Jessie Diggins, traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby and connect with congressmen and share their stories. “We just talked about our experiences with climate change and how we see it impacting sports and the outdoor recreation industry kind of as a whole,” Schumacher said.
Schumacher said he feels like being involved with POW is an easy way to have a voice in the climate change conversation. The cross-country skier began skiing in his Anchorage, Alaska. backyard as soon as he could walk. Over the years and after spending so much time outdoors, he began worrying about changes he saw in his surroundings. “Growing up in Alaska, I’ve noticed winter is just becoming way more erratic and it’s pretty easy to see where the glaciers used to be,” Schumacher said.
His anecdotal experiences of watching the climate change around him date back to his high school days. Schumacher recalled skiing for three or four years as a teen, only on man-made snow, a quite unusual occurrence for the Alaskan city known for record-breaking snowfall. “This fear of what the future is going to look like weighed on me super heavily those years and made me feel like I need to not just sit around. I think it’s easy when you focus on the small things that are in your world,” Schumacher said.
Schumacher joined the U.S. ski team in 2018 after graduating from high school and got involved with POW shortly after. While he considers himself a quiet, introverted leader, he said climate advocacy aligns with his values and his outlook to think globally and act locally. “Being an advocate I think just helps me reckon with my place in the Earth and feeling like I’m doing something,” Schumacher said. He remembered training on running trails with glaciers in Alaska and the shock that came with being able to run a little bit farther every time as they diminished, “It’s nice to go back to those places and not just have the sinking feeling of like, God, what am I doing here?” Schumacher said.
READ MORE: Gus Schumacher makes U.S. cross-country skiing history in Minneapolis
The skier has also recognized massive changes while competing with Team USA on the FIS Cross-Country World Cup circuit. “You drive through Italy…we’re going race to race and there’s venues that are so, so below the snow line. You’re like, ‘Wow, how is this even a venue?’ But there’s trails there, you know people skied there and these trails were built for a reason, and you just wouldn’t ever rely on something like that for a race anymore and let alone, just recreational skiing,” Schumacher said.
Schumacher said he’s worried that for an already niche sport, opportunity and access to participate are becoming increasingly limited. “As a cross-country ski community, you just see that shrinking and it’s kind of a bummer. Obviously, there’s a whole slew of other massive changes that are almost too much to really comprehend,” Schumacher said.
Despite his concerns for his sport and the world around him, he’s doing his best to persevere. Schumacher competed in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim, Norway, in late February into early March 2025. The conditions were far from ideal for competition: heavy rain, strong winds and unseasonably warm temperatures. Despite it all, Schumacher placed ninth in the world in the men’s 20km skiathlon. “Being able to adapt and realize that’s how it is and we can do our best on climate and reducing emissions but at the end of the day if it’s 40 and raining and the snow is up to your ankles in a skate race, you’ve got to go out there and do the race still,” Schumacher said. He said his career-best performance in the event was about resiliency, something he believes is also central to fighting climate change.
Cross-country skiing Olympic competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics begins February 7 at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Schumacher’s first event is expected to be the men’s skiathlon on February 8, where he’ll be bidding to make history for the U.S. team and continue his global fight against climate change along the way.
Throughout the winter, in a series called Hometown Hopefuls, NBC is spotlighting the stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from across the United States as they work towards the opportunity to represent their country at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. We’ll learn about their paths to their sports’ biggest stage, the communities that have been formative along the way, and the causes they’re committed to in their hometowns and around the world. Visit nbcsports.com/hometown-hopefuls for more stories on the road to Milan Cortina.
