Nancy Johnstone grew up in Stowe, Vermont, starting out as an alpine skier. At college, she decided to start Nordic racing after her coach said she didn’t have the “need for speed.” But the Nordic team was more like a club–nothing too serious.
It wasn’t until she moved back to Vermont and started graduate school at the University of Vermont that she really started to take Nordic skiing seriously. Nancy started working for an exercise physiologist who worked with a biathlon team. She started doing a lot of racing in aerobic sports like triathlons and bike racing, which led her to take Nordic skiing more seriously and get interested in biathlon. She then joined the National Guard to get funding for biathlon and eventually made the team.
Nancy’s career path goes against the status quo of today, which pushes young skiers to skip out on college and go into full-time skiing right after high school. And she thinks her path was essential to her success.
“I think it’s possible to enter [skiing] later and keep life a little slower in the competitive world,” Nancy said. “It has become so pushy, and I think it’s really hard on kids. In aerobic sports, it’s a long haul, so you can’t just put everything [in at such a young age and not expect to] just fizzle out.”
Nancy started competing in 1986, but prior to 1992, they didn’t have women’s biathlon in the Olympics. Though there was a lot of world competition with World Cups every year, the women weren’t allowed at the Olympics.
“In 1988, we called it the women’s and children’s championships because the women and juniors were in Chamonix competing while the men were in Calgary at the Olympics,” Nancy said.
Then in 1992, Nancy was part of the first-ever women’s biathlon event at the Olympics.
“The Olympics are awesome, but you don’t really realize it at the time because you’re so focused [on racing],” Nancy said. “But it was definitely an honor to be there.”
Nonetheless, there was still a mixed response.
“[There were] a lot of people wondering why women were doing this and a lot of ridiculous questions from the media,” Nancy said. “People couldn’t see that women should be skiing around with a rifle. They just didn’t think it was lady-like.”
Though it wasn’t that long ago in a way, Nancy still feels that a lot has changed since then.
While training, Nancy found it super helpful to watch videos of other professional skiers.
“I’m a visual person,” Nancy said. “It really helps me to watch in slow motion [because] you can watch exactly what they’re doing.” And though it can be difficult, it’s also great to get a video of yourself to improve on your technique too.
Throughout all of her competition in Europe, Nancy loved skiing in Antholz in Italy and Norway.
“[In Antholz], the trails are really fun,” Nancy said. “You can ski up this road that’s not open in the winter that takes you to Austria in the Dolomites. [It’s a] beautiful place [with] a cool little town.”
Nancy also has a lot of memories of racing in Russia. Though it was just before the fall of the Soviet Union and tensions were running high, the Russian biathlon fans were unmatched.
“You’d just never seen so many people packing a course, and they’d get closer and narrow [in the course]. It would become like the top of the Tour de France where fans come in really close and the bikes can barely get by. That’s what it was like when you’d race through, and then one guy came in and is running alongside me. He then just stole my hat off my head,” Nancy said laughing.
She will also never forget what the Russian fans called her while she was racing.
“I think Reagan might’ve been president, and they knew my name was Nancy, so they started screaming ‘Nancy Reagan, Nancy Reagan.’ which was very bizarre,” she said laughing again.
After her husband, Hans, got a job in Jackson, Nancy found her way back out west. She started coaching at the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club and eventually became the Nordic Program Director for a few years. With the job came running the Nordic center at Trail Creek and, of course, having a few run-ins with the moose over there.
“Hans and I always felt like there was just a lack of Nordic skiing in Jackson,” Nancy said. “Trail Creek is great, but it’s limited. And many years later, we came upon [Turpin Meadow Ranch].”
When they found Turpin, a historic dude ranch, it was in foreclosure, had been run down by multiple owners, and needed a lot of money and effort put into it to make it liveable. With a loan from a friend, Nancy and her family were able to buy the ranch and begin working on redoing it.
“It’s the most beautiful spot on Earth,” Nancy said. “It doesn’t take much vision to see what that place could be. It just needed somebody to put the work in.”
And they did. Nancy and her family renovated the cabins and the main lodge, and built a new kitchen, while still trying to keep the character of the old ranch.
“In the summertime, it’s like a dude ranch. In the winter, we saw the potential for Nordic trails,” Nancy said. “It’s just a magical place, and there are thousands of acres you can put Nordic trails on.”
Though she met resistance from the forest service at first, Nancy was able to get approval to create and sustain the trails. Luckily the trails had very little impact on the landscape with minimal amounts of tree cutting, as old roads and pasturelands made it quite easy. And today the Bridger Teton Forest Service is extremely supportive of Turpin Meadow Ranch and the trails it provides to the Nordic community in Jackson. Nancy also hopes one day they can add a biathlon range to the Nordic center there too.
After doing so much racing, Nancy has come to enjoy doing what she’s called “adventure Nordic skiing” in areas where snowmobiles have packed the snow.
“I think after biathlon, you get tired of going around in circles,” Nancy said. “But I just love being out in the woods in winter. I love feeling my face frozen, and I like the silence of being out in the woods. Around Jackson, some of my favorite Nordic [areas] are not what people are grooming all the time. [I] go into the woods and just skate over snowmobile-packed [snow].”
Nancy also loves the freedom of crust cruising in Grand Teton National Park in the spring, and her favorite Nordic center is not too hard to guess.
“For Nordic skiing, out at Turpin is my favorite,” Nancy said. “I guess I’m biased because I created the trails, but the views are amazing, it’s quiet, and it’s just special out there.”
Nancy and Hans, after recent selling the Alpine House, continue to live in Jackson, while raising their 3 children and enjoying the Jackson Hole winter landscape.
