Kikkan Randall

Kikkan Randall, the daughter of Ronn and Deborah Randall, was born into a skiing family on Dec. 31, 1982, in Salt Lake City. Her father began teaching her how to ski one day after her first birthday. In the mid-1980s, she moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with her parents, where her younger siblings, Tanner and Kalli, were born. Randall attended East Anchorage High School, where she won 10 state titles, including seven in track and three in cross-country running. After graduating, she moved to Utah to train with the United States Ski Team but returned to Alaska due to homesickness. She made her Olympic debut as a 19-year-old at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and participated in the inaugural Olympic individual sprint. In January 2006, Randall returned to Soldier Hollow, Utah, the site of the 2002 Olympic cross-country competition, and won national titles in the individual sprint, the 5-km freestyle and the 10-km classical. At the 2006 Winter Olympics, she finished ninth in the Olympic sprint, the best ever Olympic result in cross-country skiing by an American woman. Shortly thereafter, she finished fifth in a World Cup sprint. On Jan. 21, 2007, she captured bronze in the women's 1.2-km sprint in Rybinsk, Russia, the best ever cross-country skiing World Cup result by an American woman. Later that year, she took the first World Cup win for an American female skier since the introduction of women's competition in 1978 in another 1.2-km sprint. In February 2009, Randall took the silver medal in the 1.3-km sprint at the Nordic Skiing World Championships. In January 2010, she qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics, where she earned a sixth-place finish in the team sprint and her best individual finish of eighth place in the individual sprint event. In the 2011-2012 season, she became the first woman to win a World Cup discipline title in cross-country skiing by topping the overall sprint standings. In the 2012-2013 season, she found herself on the podium with four World Cup freestyle wins. She didn't stop there, though, as she continued her winning ways by securing a first-place finish in the 3-km freestyle prologue of the Tour de Ski in Oberhof, Germany, and a first-place finish in a team freestyle sprint in Quebec. She finished in first in the final World Cup sprint standings and third in the overall standings. Randall and Jessica Diggins won the first-ever team sprint gold for U.S. women at the World Ski Championships. In the 2013-2014 season, her success continued, and she qualified for the U.S. Olympic team and a chance to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics. She won the World Cup freestyle sprint events in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, Szklarska Poreba, Poland, and Lahti, Finland, earning her the top spot in the overall World Cup standings for a third time. In October 2015, Randall announced that she was expecting her first child in April and would have to step away for the 2015-2016 season. She returned for the 2016-2017 season with a focus on the 2017 World Championship and the 2018 Winter Olympics. She is married to former Canadian ski racer Jeff Ellis, who works as a marketing support manager for FIS Cross-Country World Cup. The couple has a son, Breck, who was born in April 2016.