By Lizzy Hahn

Photo courtesy of Ben Buck. Photo by Tobias Albrigtsen.
The 2022 and 2023 NCAA championship skiers stand on the podium in Lake Placid, USA.
Back row, left to right: Rosie Fordham, Mariel Pulles, Christopher Kalev, Joe Davies, Mike Ophoff and Ben Buck. Front row, left to right: Kendall Kramer, Viggo Albrigtsen and Eliska Albrigtsen.

Five current or former athletes from the University of Alaska Fairbanks will represent their home countries at the Winter Olympics starting this week in Milano, Italy.

“I’ll definitely have the extra motivation,” Kendall Kramer, former NCAA champion told The Sun Star, “getting to represent the U.S. and people from Alaska and Fairbanks.”

One current Nanook and four former Nanooks will be competing in various cross country events over the next few weeks. Current Nanook, Rosie Fordham, will be representing her home country, Australia. Four Nanook Alums will be representing their home nations in the Olympics. Alaska’s Kendall Kramer made Team USA; Mariel Pulles will be skiing for Team Estonia; Mike Ophoff will be skiing for Team Czechia; Joe Davies will be skiing for Team Great Britain.

“There's no secret sauce. It's not magic,” said UAF mathematics student and collegiate skier Rosie Fordham. “It's just like hard work and you just keep plodding along and eventually the results come.”

Fordham explained that the process for qualifying has two steps. Firstly, the year before the Olympics, a country can get quota spots by gaining a nation ranking at World Cup races. Based on that ranking, each nation gets an allocated number of spots for their country. Then, the year of the Olympics, athletes are selected based on their results. Fordham explained that Australia has a tiered system to select who gets a spot on the Olympics team. Since she got a 13th place finish in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year, she was able to secure her spot.

As the Olympics inch closer, Fordham said that her training has begun to taper off and is now “lighter and snappier.”

While Fordham has been competing in Europe, her UAF classes continue. The statistics department at UAF has been “really helpful in allowing me to take exams, get everything done, still learn,” Fordham said.

“I definitely learned a lot from Kendall and Mariel, who are also coming to this Olympics,” Fordham said. Fordham joined UAF in 2021.

Since graduating from UAF in May 2025, Kramer said that her training has involved more rest and “more quality workouts,” now that she is not in school. She has since joined the Alaska Pacific University’s nordic ski center. Kramer trained with APU in the summers prior to graduating.

Both Fordham and Kramer mentioned that the five Nanooks going to the Olympics were a part of the six Nanooks competing in the NCAA championships in both 2022 and 2023. The sixth Nanook, Christopher Kalev, was very close to getting a spot on Team Estonia, but just missed.

“I think that showed that we all made each other stronger and better through our time on the team together,” said Kramer in reference to her teammates competing at the Olympics with her.

“To my knowledge, yes, this is the first time we've had this great representation in one sport at the Olympics,” said Interim UAF Head Coach Ben Buck.

For Pulles, this will be her second time participating in the Winter Olympics. Pulles made her first appearance at the Olympics in Beijing, China in 2022.

“We just love to race and take up any opportunity we have to do it,” said Buck. The Nanooks are spread out all over the place right now. There are a few skiers at Canadian Junior World and U23 qualifiers; Fordham is in Europe; and the whole team just got back from the RMSA Invite in Utah.

Over in Europe, the women's skiathlon is kicking off the Olympic games on Feb. 7. The Olympic games will conclude on Feb. 22 with the women's 50k classic mass start.

The rest of the Nanooks will be traveling to compete against the University of Denver in Colorado on Feb. 7 and 8.

Five Nanooks are headed to the Winter Olympics!

Nanook basketball hosts MSUB, SPU for conference matchups