Park City residents Taylor Fletcher and Kevin Bickner secured their spots on their respective Olympic teams with first-place finishes at the U.S. Olympic Nordic trials in Lake Placid, New York, on Friday and Saturday.
Bickner, a ski jumper, topped all comers with two jumps that were both worth 128.5 points to lead the field with 256 points. Bickner appeared at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where he finished 18th in the normal hill event, 20th in the large hill event and helped the U.S. finish ninth in the large hill team event. Now, he’ll get a chance to compete in Beijing.
“There is a lot of work that went into this. Over the past year, I’ve been coming back from some time off and get back to where I was a couple years ago. I’m super excited to be going back to the Olympics,” said Bickner in a USA Nordic release. “It has been a little bit more difficult this time around and I knew this was going to be an important event to win to secure that spot.”
Fletcher, on the other hand, needed a little more drama to lock up his spot in the Nordic combined competition in the 2022 Games. Fletcher’s 111.5 jump points were only enough to land him in fourth place heading into the cross-country skiing portion of the event. He trailed Ben Loomis, who won the ski jumping portion, by 56 seconds going into the race, but passed Loomis on the last lap to take home first and a ticket to Beijing.
This will be Fletcher’s fourth appearance at the Games after trips to Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang. Fletcher’s best finish at the Olympics was a 20th-place result in 2014.
“I’ve worked my entire career to make it to the Olympics, and to have the best results that I can at the Olympics. Even though there were good years, I just never had the performance. Today was a difficult day, I didn’t have my best jump and I’m capable of a lot more,” said Fletcher in a USA Nordic release. “But, I didn’t have the worst jump and I was in the hunt from the start. I knew that I needed a good race in order to catch Ben and Jared (Shumate), they have been skiing very well and pushing me all summer long. It came down to the last hill and that was the make or break moment, I went as hard as I could and was able to come away with the win.”
Park City natives Shumate and Stephen Schumann did their best to try to lock up a spot themselves but came up just short. Shumate finished with the third most points in jumping and the third fastest race time. Schumann struggled jumping, finishing ninth, but tried to make up for it with the second fastest race time.
On the ski jumping side, four Park City natives competed in the women’s trials. They were led by Paige Jones, who finished in fourth. Rachael Haerter, Samantha Macuga and Josie Johnson came in seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively.