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Maïa Schwinghammer’s Olympic journey didn’t begin on a mountain. It began behind a snowmobile, being towed across Christopher Lake in Saskatchewan.
“I grew up here, in Saskatoon” Schwinghammer said. “My parents used to run the local hill, Mount Blackstrap, and that’s really where I learned how to ski.”
Blackstrap wasn’t big. But it was enough.
“That’s definitely where I learned how to ski and gave me all those basic skills to kind of progress to where I am,” she said. “It was definitely the building blocks.”
Catching the Olympic bug
Schwinghammer’s father, Rick, was deeply involved in her life and in freestyle skiing — a passion that shaped much of her early exposure to the sport.
Saskatchewan being the flat land that it is, ski trips became a part of her life. At eight years old, she was juggling school with weekend drives, long nights and spending holidays on the hills.
“We would go to Calgary, Banff, Sunshine, Lake Louise, you know, the West Coast of Canada. I’ve skied in Fernie and Red Mountain,” Schwinghammer said.
Milano-Cortina will be her first Olympics in the bib, but not her first Olympic experience.
“Watching the Olympics in 2010 was really my ‘aha’ moment,” she said. “I was eight years old, but it definitely had a lasting effect.
“I want to do that. I want to become an Olympian.”
When Schwinghammer finally had the chance to ski with top athletes in Whistler, she felt the difference immediately.
“I remember some of the kids going, ‘Ohhh … I don’t know if she can ski with us,’” she said. “I definitely didn’t have the mileage everybody else had.”
But she stuck with it, making the provincial team at 15. Two years later, she made the national team.
“And I’ve been traveling so much ever since,” she said.
Chile. France. World Cups across the globe.
From Optimist Hill to the Italian Alps, Maia Schwinghammer didn’t grow up near mountains but she learned how to fly anyway. The Saskatoon freestyle skier is set to compete at the Olympics in Milan.
But with every climb comes struggle. Her momentum was derailed at the World Championships in 2019 and then she lost a friend and teammate.
“One of my biggest challenges ever probably was like, losing one of my close teammates in 2020 was really hard,” she said.
She came close to qualifying for Beijing in 2022, but didn’t make it.
“I was kind of cutting it close. I was on the edge,” she said.
“Had I gone to the Olympics in 2022, I would have gone as a participant,” she said. “And it’s pretty cool that this February I’ll be going as a true competitor.”
“I think not going in 2022 gave me that push and that motivation,” she said. “It’s one of the big drivers of why I was able to push myself so much and improve so much as an athlete.”
Then she won her first World Cup, at home, which qualified her for the 2026 Olympics.
Which is where she is right now, in Milano-Cortina.
“It’s something I’ve worked for my whole entire life,” she said. “I really just want to do my best.”
Now it’s all about staying calm.
“I do a lot of visualization, a lot of meditation and just try to find ways to keep the mind calm in those high-stress situations,” she said.
Through it all, her father has been by her side — from towing her behind a snowmobile on a frozen Saskatchewan lake to watching her line up against the best in the world.
“I tell Maia … top to bottom, I want you to have fun. And however it turns out, we’ve already won,” Rick said.
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