A Big 2026 For Ty Wiberg Would Be Even Sweeter With A Trip To Milano Cortina Mixed In

If everything goes according to plan, Ty Wiberg and his family will have plenty to celebrate over the next year.

Wiberg, 23, is on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in community health from Montana State in May. He then might take a year off before he starts graduate school for a master’s degree in family and relationship counseling.

But before then, the promising sit skier hopes to qualify for the Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 in March. If he qualifies, he plans to speak with his professors about missing a few weeks of class to compete for the first time on the world’s largest stage.

“Ideally, I’m going to work through the winter and just kind of put my head down and grind through school and skiing and just try and finish it out strong,” said Wiberg, a native of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Wiberg has been busy working toward those goals during the summer before his senior year. He has spent this offseason training in Bozeman, Montana, where both his school and U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing are based.

Wiberg received some encouraging news earlier this month when U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing named him to its development team. He’s one of only seven athletes to make the cut.

“I truly am blessed to be able to be on the development team because it shows that the work that I’m putting in is paying off,” Wiberg said. “We’re able to get some funding to help kind of buffer the costs of being an athlete and trying to compete at the highest level. But I think it’s just that reward of seeing my hard work paying off and knowing that what I’m doing is getting me closer and closer to my goal of making the Paralympics.”

Wiberg has been training six days a week this offseason, from Tuesday through Sunday, and he sometimes gets in two workouts a day. As he has done over the past few seasons, he has continued to focus on increasing the volume and intensity of his training.

It helps that he has had fellow sit skiers Nicole Zaino and Michael Kneeland to train with this summer in Bozeman. Like Wiberg, Zaino and Kneeland are members of the U.S. development team and are hoping to qualify for their first Winter Paralympics in a few months.

“When we’re all on the development team, at this very similar level of competition, all having gone to world cups and that sort of thing, it really is helpful because we can all use each other to motivate ourselves,” Wiberg said. “It’s somebody to chat with when things are getting tough. It’s somebody to go to for advice on like, ‘Hey, I see that you do this when we’re climbing (on your sit ski) or when we’re on a flat (surface). How do you do that?’

“It’s people that you can kind of go to to have additional resources because they’re doing the same thing that you’re doing, and they also have the same goals. So, it’s people that understand and get it, and it just helps elevate your own training as well as it allows you to help elevate your teammates, too.”

Wiberg, Zaino and Kneeland got a sneak peek of the venue that will host the Nordic skiing events at the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics when all three of them qualified this past winter to race at a world cup in Val di Fiemme, Italy.

Wiberg competed in a pair of events there. He finished in 21st place in the men’s sitting 7.5-kilometer biathlon sprint on Jan. 30, then placed 37th in the cross-country skiing classic sprint two days later.

Wiberg said earning a spot at the world cup gave him with even more motivation to believe he had a chance to qualify for Milano Cortina, though it won’t be easy.

“It was a good time to kind of see what things are going to be like (at the Winter Paralympics), what are the snow conditions going to be like, how close are we to things and that sort of thing,” Wiberg said. “It was also just a boost in morale for me because having qualified for that world cup, that obviously showed that I’m putting in the work.”

A week after the Val di Fiemme competition, Wiberg was one of seven Americans to race at the IBU Para Biathlon World Championships in Pokljuka, Slovenia. It was his first time competing at the world championships, and he was encouraged after earning a pair of top 20 finishes.

“I’ve definitely started to find that my strengths lie in biathlon after shooting well in Pokljuka, Slovenia, and just improving in biathlon,” Wiberg said. “I’ve found that I really enjoyed that side of things, but I’m definitely not just focused on one (event) because I want to give myself the best possible chances for qualifying for things, as well as just getting the most opportunities to compete in races.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.