Skiing may be a popular sport at Middlebury, but it’s hard to find a faster student than Alpine star Ali Nullmeyer ’23. While most of the student body flocked to the Snow Bowl for recreational skiing last weekend, Nullmeyer was in a hotel room in Jasná, Slovakia, focusing on her upcoming World Cup race.
Nullmeyer, who hails from Toronto, Ontario, has been on the road with the Canadian Alpine Ski Team this winter, traveling around Europe to compete in various slalom races. In the past few weeks, she’s finished 24th at the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) World Ski Championships in Italy and 22nd in the World Cup in Slovakia.
This is Nullmeyer’s third season competing at the World Cup level as a member of Team Canada. While she has podiumed 14 times at FIS events dating back to 2014, her best placement at a World Cup event was 16th in the slalom in Flachau, Austria. Nullmeyer will compete for a spot at the Winter Olympics next year in Beijing, and is determined to perform better in the few races remaining in this year’s World Cup circuit.
“I had higher expectations for myself so I wasn’t as happy as I was hoping to be, but it was still a really awesome experience,” Nullmeyer said. “It was a really challenging hill and a lot of the girls skied really well. I’m stoked I got the experience, and I’m hoping I can build from that.”
Nullmeyer’s international experience has helped propel her to collegiate success for the Panthers: In 2020, she was an All-American and the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association Rookie of the Year. In a normal year, Nullmeyer would be bouncing between Middlebury and international competitions, but this year she’s strictly been with Team Canada because of the pandemic. Now a sophomore, Nullmeyer is also taking remote classes at Middlebury.
Middlebury Alpine coach Stever Bartlett explained that since Nullmeyer is already at the Olympic level, he’s needed to adjust his gameplan to provide her World Cup level training.
“When Ali shows up it’s a reminder that here’s a World Cup athlete [and] we need to be on our game every single day, and not just for Ali; it really elevates the whole team,” Bartlett said. “We went out of our way to provide extraordinarily exceptional days of training.”
Nullmeyer described her time with the Middlebury Alpine team as beneficial, especially since the coaching staff has helped her knock off a full second during the flat portions of the slalom race. Now she races through “the flats” faster than anyone else on Team Canada.
Nullmeyer’s journey abroad continues on Friday, when she will race in Åre, Sweden, continuing her quest to be a world champion.
Sam Lipin '23.5 returns this fall for his third semester as an editor for the Sports section. A Classics major with an Italian minor, Sam worked as a reporting intern this summer at the Addison Independent. He has hosted four radio shows through WRMC and tells his friends he plays rugby though he has not been to a practice in a year and a half.
