Back at the Olympics With A College Degree, Tricia Mangan Finished 11th in Alpine Combined

Tricia Mangan skis during the Women's Alpine Combined Downhill at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Feb. 17, 2022 in Yanqing, China.

In 2018, Mangan was a last-minute addition to the U.S. Olympic Team after Jacqueline Wiles was injured on the eve of those Games. Mangan had just finished fourth in super-G at the 2018 junior world championships and flew straight to South Korea. She competed in giant slalom and the team event in the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. 

But she was miserable back then. She took setbacks personally, and “the bad days felt like a lot more devastating,” she said. 

After those Games, Mangan decided to step back from world cup skiing and go to Dartmouth fulltime. Competing for the Big Green’s NCAA Division 1 ski team, she was a regular on the collegiate ski-racing podium, especially in giant slalom. Her sophomore year, she finished third at the 2019 NCAA Ski Championships, one second behind Laurence St. Germain, a Canadian competing for the University of Vermont and also at two Olympic Games (2018 and 2022).

The Dartmouth Ski Team did not compete last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mangan still raced — in both North America and Europe. It was her senior year in college, and she was not ready for her ski-racing career to fizzle out. 

With her college degree in hand last spring, Mangan had a choice. Find a job or pursue ski racing. Since she was not on the U.S. Ski Team, the latter would be difficult. But she had a different outlook than she had in 2018. This time, she knew she wanted to ski race. It wasn’t just something she had done all her life.

“I am a totally different person than I was four years ago,” she said. “For one, I'm absolutely loving skiing and having so much fun and am so motivated every day to get faster.”

And she now knew what it would take to stay focused on her goals.

“The biggest thing that school taught me was how to work really hard and to really appreciate and take advantage of every opportunity and every time you are on the hill because in college, you don't get many of them,” she said.

So last summer, she joined the International Ski Racing Academy, a group of high-level alpine racers from around the world.

“One of my teammates is from Bosnia, another from Slovenia, and we have a Canadian,” said Mangan. “It is a really awesome group. I feel so fortunate that that existed because I wouldn't have been able to do it to this level without them.”

One of her teammates, Alice Robinson from New Zealand, is also competing at the 2022 Winter Games.

Mangan also decided to focus on the speed events — a big leap for someone who grew up racing at Holimont, a small family ski area near Buffalo without much vertical drop. 

Eventually, Mangan would like to get into biomedical engineering; she is interested in designing prosthetics. But until then, she will focus on the physics of ski racing. 

“The Olympics feel like a very nice reward,” she said about the work she has done so far. “But I'm still excited to keep working."

Want to follow Team USA athletes during the Olympic Games Beijing 2022? Visit TeamUSA.org/Beijing-2022-Olympic-Games to view the competition schedule, medal table and results.