Hitting The Pool, Asphalt Helped Dev Skier Adelaide Bielke Come Into The Season Strong

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by Alex Abrams

Adelaide Bielke competes at the continental cup races in West Yellowstone, MT, in January 2025. (Photo by Gretchen Powers Film)

Adelaide Bielke was busy the summer before her senior year of high school.

The 17-year-old standing skier from Stillwater, Minnesota, wanted to get stronger and improve her ski technique in the offseason. To do so, she swam three days a week and went roller skiing three days a week.

In early August, Bielke competed at the U.S. Biathlon Summer Rollerski National Championship in Jericho, Vermont. She placed 14th in the youth women’s division, crossing the finish line in 38 minutes, 47.1 seconds.

After an offseason spent in the pool and on asphalt, Bielke said she has noticed a difference in her strength since getting on snow for the first time this winter in mid-November.

“I definitely think that I’m stronger than before,” Bielke said. “Getting through the races, I feel like I can push myself a little harder and go a little faster. Definitely, my ski times have improved since last season, so I’m just looking forward to keep improving.”

Bielke said her goal is to eventually qualify for the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing development team. She hopes all her offseason training will move her closer to that goal and produce faster times when she’s racing this season at national events and for her high school skiing team.

Bielke already gained race experience this season by competing in a pair of Continental Cup races sanctioned by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation on Jan. 11-12 in West Yellowstone, Montana. She also intends to race at the U.S. Biathlon Nationals in late March in Bozeman, Montana.

“I feel like I didn’t really take Nordic skiing super seriously until the past year or two, because I really want to see where I can take this,” Bielke said. “But I have seen lots of improvements. Just in general, my love for the sport has grown. I really enjoy hanging out with friends, but I also really enjoy just going around skiing on nice snow. Just the community around it is great.”

In November, Bielke was part of a group of developing athletes from across the country who participated in a weeklong training camp that U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing hosted in Canmore, Alberta. It was her third time attending the Canmore training camp, which serves as a way for athletes to prepare for the start of the new Para Nordic skiing season.

Bielke admitted it’s always “a little bit intimidating” at first to ski alongside Paralympians and other Paralympic hopefuls in Canmore, but she quickly got the hang. She also enjoyed hanging out with other developing athletes and eating dinners together as a team.

“It was a blast. It was really nice. It’s at altitude, of course, so that was good,” Bielke said of skiing around Canmore, which is more than 4,000 feet above sea level. “It was my first week on snow skis, so that was fun. But yeah, it was great. There were really great coaches.”

Susan Dunklee, a three-time U.S. Olympian in the biathlon, served as the coach for a group of standing skiers that included Bielke in Canmore. The teenager said she picked up pointers during her time with Dunklee, who retired from competing following the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022.

“It helped a lot. She was really good at explaining things and giving us tips on our technique,” Bielke said. “Every once in a while, she would just suggest certain drills for me to practice, and I think they worked for me. She was just really cool to work with.”

Bielke started doing taekwondo at age 7 and reached the level of second-degree black belt. When she was 9, she attended a ski clinic that BethAnn Chamberlain, a development coach with U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing, hosted at the Midwest Nordic Adaptive Festival in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Bielke tried the biathlon for the first time there, and she has been training for the past three years to improve in the sport. Like other newcomers to the biathlon, she admitted she’s working on trying to get the hang of combining cross-country skiing with rifle shooting.

“The learning curve is really steep, so you kind of have to experience a little bit of a plateau or a dip,” Bielke said. “But I just trust the process, and I put in a lot of training this summer, so hopefully it’ll come through.”

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.

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