Lasse Schleper Is Our New Favorite World Cup Slalom Skier

Last night, we got word that Sarah Schleper was getting ready to retire after today's race in Lienz.  Schleper has been a little off our radar in the last couple of years, so it got us thinking about her again and the amazing arc that her career has taken.

Schleper was born in Glenwood Springs, and her dad owned a locals-friendly ski shop in Vail, so she can actually lay legitimate claim to being "from Vail."  That's the funny thing about ski racing.  It's a small world, and although things happen and people change, most people here will always know you, at least in part, for who you were, no matter who you are now.  Despite their accomplishments, Ted Ligety will always be a guy who was once a mediocre J3, and Lindsey Vonn will always be Lindsey Kildow, and she'll always be from Buck Hill.  Partly, at least.  Sports Illustrated, NBC, Men's Health: these people can be fooled, but we all know.

Everyone recognizes Schleper as one of the great American ski racers of our time, but most people probably can't really say why.  She's got pretty low points, I guess.  But she has no Olympic medals, no World Championship podiums (except for a second in SL at World Juniors in 1997), and she's "only" won a single World Cup in her career.  The truth is that her greatness in skiing transcends results; it lies with the timing of her rise to success and her continued involvement with the sport in the context of a larger life.

Schleper came on the scene in a big way in the mid-90's.  We think of Vonn and Mancuso (and now Shiffrin) as the Wunderkinds of American skiing, but Schleper was one of the originals.  She won the SL at Whistler Cup in 1994 and, like Vonn, Mancuso, and Shiffrin, was one of those J3's that everyone knew about.  It took her a couple years to find her footing on the World Cup, but she scored her first World Cup points at age 19.  A couple years later, in 2000, Schleper won a pre-Christmas Nor-Am SL by 2 seconds over Lindsey Kildow, and scored her first World Cup top-10 a couple weeks later (a race in which she also won the second run). 

Schleper, along with Caroline Lalive, used her talent, celebrity status, and amazing hair and bridged the gap between generations of skiers.  For girls especially, starting around 1998, Picabo Street was definitely your idol in ski racing.  Kristina Koznick was next in line, and she should be credited with leading the charge of the resurgent US Women's tech scene.  But it was Schleper who provided the next step, that critical piece of continuity in performance between Koznick's 20 World Cup podiums and the domination of the Kildow-Vonn/Mancuso era.  Women's skiing, especially in SL and GS, lapsed pretty heavily after Tamara McKinney.  Koznick righted the ship and brought Schleper up through the ranks.  Schleper, in turn, provided the benchmark that Kildow and Mancuso looked to and ultimately surpassed. 

But what really makes Sarah Schleper's contribution to ski racing meaningful happened later.  She called it a season shortly after the Olympics in 2006 so that she could have surgery on her back.  She planned to miss the 2007 season to rehab, which she did.  As she began her comeback, she found out she was pregnant and so her return to skiing was delayed yet another year.  Rumors were everywhere.  Some said she had a fling with a male model, some foreigner that nobody knew.  Some said they were having a shotgun wedding.  Some said they were not together at all.  Whether or not Schleper heard any of that, and whether or not any of it was true, it didn't matter.  She had a baby, they named him Lasse, and she came back for the 2009 season with her family on tour and made the top-30 in her second World Cup start back.

In doing this, Schleper made a powerful statement about sport, skiing, and life, and in some ways she has changed the game for all of us.  In her segment in "Truth in Motion", Schleper says she was not planning on starting family life so soon.  But the circumstances were unavoidable and she had to roll with it.  Her story is not a triumph over adversity.  Her story is one of working hard for what you want to achieve, welcoming what life has to offer, and ultimately figuring out how to do both at the same time.  She proved to us all that ski racing is not life, but that it is the perfect metaphor for life and a perfect means to an end.  Schleper is a ski racer, but she is also somebody's mom, and by being both she has shown us that it is possible to live ski racing and to simultaneously live something larger than ski racing.  As society fills us ever more with "sport is life," Schleper's experience is a critical lesson for us all.  Sport is like life.  Sport is part of life.  But sport is not life.  To be successful in sport is not the same as being successful in life.  Schleper has done both, simultaneously, and that is something that almost nobody else in ski racing has accomplished.

Thanks, Sarah.  Your roar has been much more than a noise.  Your roar is inimitable: soulful and loud and the perfect way for us to hear the truth of the Lioness.


PS - Here are some interesting stats from Schleper's FIS bio:

558 career FIS starts
62 career FIS wins
121 FIS podiums
1 Nor-Am title (SL in 2000)
1 score below 0.00 points



- Lead photo courtesy of Yahoo Sports

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