The moment he’d been dreaming of for the past 150 days, an eternity for a six-year-old kid, was finally here. The first substantial snowfall of the season landed in Starksboro, Vermont, which meant that Ryan Cochran-Siegle could go skiing.
Soccer was fun, baseball was too. But nothing compared to the feeling of putting on slightly oversized, hand-me-down ski gear, piling into the car with his older sisters and cousins, and peering out the window as Cochran’s Ski Area came into view. The 25-minute drive from home somehow seemed longer than the 150 days.
The anticipation continued building as Ryan gripped the rope tow that slowly tugged him up the mountain. His gloves buzzed with the ropes’ vibrations…until it was time to let go. He slid away from the unloading zone and turned to face the downward slope. His heart pounded. The cold faded away. He pushed off. The potential energy turned kinetic.
At long last, he was skiing fast once again.
Cochran-Siegle can’t even remember putting on his first pair of skis, but has been told that at the ripe “old” age of two, his mom strapped him in and began teaching him the basics.
“Her philosophy was always ‘if you can walk, you can ski,’” Ryan told NBC Sports with a smile.
Barbara Cochran was perhaps the most overqualified ski instructor in the history of ski instructors. She won Olympic gold in slalom at the 1972 Winter Olympics and also led the “Ski Tots at Cochran’s” program, which provided lessons to children all winter long at Cochran’s Ski Area — the family-founded (and operated) nonprofit ski hill. She was a world-class professional in every sense, but Ryan had more than one influential teacher.
“I fell in love with skiing because my older cousins were falling in love with skiing,” he reflected. “My cousin Robby, I was trying to do whatever he was doing.”
Ryan and Robby Kelley are two years apart, a significant age gap (from a physical standpoint) for boys.
“Robby was always a better skier than me and a ways further along in his development. His skiing level was actually quite a bit higher than the other kids my age and his age too. So I was never focused on getting beat or beating him. I was just trying to learn and keep up.”
The family spent countless days on Vermont snow at Cochran’s. They built little jumps together, lapped on the t-bar, raced side by side. It was the ultimate pre-national team training camp, essentially an elite skiing daycare.
There’s no “ski” in “Cochran’s”?
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) could fill an entire start list with the number of professional skiers in the Cochran family. There are so many that they have collectively been deemed “the Skiing Cochrans.” That’s like if Steph, Seth and Dell were labeled the basket-balling Curry’s.
Four of Ryan’s cousins — Jimmy Cochran, Tim Kelley, Robby Kelley and Jess Kelley — were members of the U.S. Alpine Ski Team. Jimmy represented the country at two different Winter Olympic Games, the first in 2006 in Torino and the second in 2010 in Vancouver.
His mom Barbara won an Olympic gold medal at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games, almost 50 years exactly before Ryan claimed silver in Beijing. Barbara’s older sister (and Ryan’s aunt) Marilyn Cochran earned a World Cup victory in 1969 and competed on the same Olympic team as Barbara. Bob Cochran, Ryan’s uncle and Barbara’s brother, was also on the ‘72 U.S. Ski team. Aunt Lindy Cochran represented the U.S. at the 1976 Games in Innsbruck, Austria.
But it was Ryan’s grandparents who planted the roots of this sequoia-sized family tree. 65 years ago, Mickey and Ginny Cochran purchased a modest house on a hill in a small town called Richmond, Vermont. They transformed the property into a lodge and ski slope, complete with a 400-foot rope tow and floodlights, which they named Cochran’s Ski Area. It was the ultimate training ground for their four carving kids, but it served a greater purpose — a purpose that’s remained strong nearly seven decades later.
“We’ve never tried to be Stowe or Killington or any of these massive resorts,” Ryan said. “We just try to get people in the door and recognize that it’s hard for most to find a way to learn how to ski and snowboard because of that financial barrier. That’s really the whole mission around it, and it started with my grandparents.”
Mickey and Ginny provided free instruction to thousands, establishing Cochran’s as a linchpin of the Richmond community. When Ryan’s mom and siblings found success, the ski area evolved into a cultural touchstone. Its heart and soul carried into Ryan’s generation.
Tasting silver
Ryan claims he never really felt pressure carrying the Cochran name. He has a desire — as most people do — to be successful and add to his family’s legacy, but he believes the sheer number of relatives that forged a path before him actually served as a diluting mechanism, dispersing much of the attention he would have received if, say, he was the lone son of a Bode Miller, the six-time Olympic medalist for the United States.
“Being the youngest was such an advantage,” he explained. “I wasn’t the first cousin to make the U.S. Ski team. I wasn’t even the first cousin to make it to the Olympics. Those milestones had already been set in place by the time I came around. I think it just seemed like it was very attainable.”
Following in the snowy footprints of his supremely talented cousins, Cochran-Siegle landed a spot on the U.S. Development Team in 2010 and made his World Cup debut in 2011 at age 19. A year later, he won a pair of gold medals — the downhill and combined — at the World Junior Championships in Rocarasso, Italy. Knee injuries put him on the shelf for much of 2013, but he returned with a vengeance, dominating the Nor-Am circuit in 2014 and claiming the overall title.
Knee problems resurfaced, forcing Ryan to miss an entire season of action to recover from a lateral meniscus transplant. Interestingly, when he returned, he found much of his success (albeit moderate) in giant slalom, a technical discipline, including an 11th place finish in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, his best result at that Games.
It was when he shifted his focus back to downhill and super-G that he started seeing more consistent positive results. He earned two World Cup podium finishes during the 2020-2021 season, including his first ever Cup win.
Cochran-Siegle was throwing down the best runs of his career, but the injury bug stung again, stopping the surge in its tracks. In early 2021, Cochran-Siegle broke his neck during a downhill ski crash in Austria, requiring surgery to fuse his C6 and fractured C7 vertebrae. Less than a year later, the Olympian put an exclamation point on his triumphant comeback by unexpectedly earning a super-G silver medal in Beijing (his first podium since returning from the injury).
Nearly four years later, he offered an interesting take on what the silver medal means to him today:
“It’s definitely been impactful. Right now it’s kind of the highlight of my career. That’s my notoriety. I wouldn’t say that I honestly think about it so much, at least, I try not to. I try to be very normal. Obviously I was able to accomplish a lifelong dream, and having accomplished it was such a weight off my back.
“But you’re still the same person. I skied really well this one specific day. It doesn’t make me a silver medalist every day. Or at least I have not proven that I am at that level every day. So I really do need to own where I’m at, and not build myself up too much.”
Home is where the syrup is
Ryan typically spends the off-season with his family in Vermont. The World Cup season ends in late March, so he can finally unpack the suitcase he travels around the world with for four straight months (sometimes longer, depending on training camps) and sleep in the same, familiar bed every night.
This year, Cochran-Siegle focused spring on renovating the new home he bought with his fiancé, Jessie. It was exciting, but took him away from his volunteer duties working at Cochran’s Slopestyle syrup. Yes, the Vermonter who skis also makes syrup, and although he’s not at the center of the operation, it’s clear he knows what he’s talking about. He provided a pseudo Ted Talk at the Team USA Media Summit in October.
Yet Ryan, always humble, claimed he’s not an expert. He is, however, an expert at getting a sugar rush off his own product. He’s a self-proclaimed “maple syrup chugger,” not quite to a Super Troopers degree, nor Buddy the Elf who mixes his pasta with it. Cochran-Siegle was more of a volume guy. As a kid he’d douse his pancakes and ice cream with it. Now he uses it on salmon, baked carrots and in his coffee.
Of course, it’s not just the syrup that has him sticking around. He’s also a board member of Cochran’s Ski Area. He doesn’t spend nearly as much time there as he would like, but he does foresee a future in which he’s more involved. Perhaps like his mom as an instructor, or on the business side of things, maybe even using his mechanical engineering degree.
“I think a lot about being available to people because with skiing, you’re able to share so much,” he said. “Growing up, I’d always see my mom be totally open. People came up to her about watching her win the medal and she fully embraces that experience and shares it with them, which I think is really cool. Once I’m done skiing, I want to focus on continuing that legacy.”
There’s still work to be done
Cochran-Siegle knows he’s closer to the end than the beginning of his career. Still, his skiing journey is not yet complete. There’s more work to be done, more goals to accomplish. Specifically, he revealed that winning a downhill World Cup event and a downhill Olympic gold medal — the holy grail for many professional Alpine skiers — are the two items bolded and underlined twice on his bucket list.
RCS is in the midst of his 12th full World Cup season, and three downhill races in, he nearly checked off one of his missions. Marco Odermatt (SUI), the most accomplished male skier of this generation, snatched a Beaver Creek victory away from him, leading to a runner-up finish. Still, he’s got momentum and plenty more races to go in the discipline, including this weekend.
As for Olympic gold, this does happen to be an Olympic year, and Milan Cortina is around the corner. The male Alpine skiers will hit the Stelvio Slopes in Bormio, a place that RCS is not only familiar with, but has collected a core career accolade. His lone World Cup win came there (a super-G) and believes that his experience on the downhill course will serve him well.
“I could run the full downhill right now in my head, even knowing how the course deteriorates,” he said. “Having that familiarity, knowing where you need to be pushing, whether it’s line, aerodynamics, physicality, those types of things will be important in trying to put down the best run of my life.”
Cochran-Siegel officially qualified for the Games but realizes he won’t be a favorite in a speed skiing field that includes Odermatt, Franjo Vonn Allmen, Dominik Paris, and (if healthy) Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. But he wasn’t a favorite in Beijing either and look how that turned out for him.
“Experiencing an Olympic medal, you kind of learn that it isn’t the answer to all of life’s happiness,” he said. “But also going into this Olympics and being like, I’ve already achieved this important piece of my career, now I have nothing to lose. I have so much freedom in this next one.”
The way he’s training reflects the mentality. He used to try to go as fast as he could in practice. Now, as he’s easier on himself mentally, he’s also easier on himself physically. He “keeps it more simple.” Instead of letting it rip, he prepares methodically for the Cup course he’s racing. He walks, spins and stretches for recovery. He works on improving the little things and fine-tuning his mechanics.
Winning in Milan Cortina will be an uphill ski for Cochran-Siegle, but he’s treating the lead-up like he’s that 6-year-old boy in Starksboro: Grateful for the opportunity to participate in the sport he loves, and to do it once again on the world’s biggest stage.
“I’m at my best when I’m feeling confident and honestly not even thinking about results. I’m just going to go out there and ski.”
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.
