The Grind of Greatness: Training as a Multi-Sport Paralympian

Aaron Pike typically competes in the New York City Marathon each fall, but he decided to skip it this past year to free up his schedule and start training on snow as soon as possible. 

Kendall Gretsch also made the decision to scale back her plans this past summer to focus more on sit skiing. 

As one of only a few Americans who has won a gold medal at both the Summer and Winter Paralympics, Gretsch had never been able to attend a training camp that U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing hosts every May in Bend, Oregon. She’s usually too busy competing in triathlons to make the trip to central Oregon. 

However, with the Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 quickly approaching, Gretsch wanted to prioritize Nordic skiing this year. As a result, she cut down on the number of triathlons she competed in over the summer and joined other top American Para Nordic skiers for several days of training in Bend. 

This is the type of dilemma that Pike, Gretsch and 19-time Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters have been facing over the past decade. All three athletes are members of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team and considered medal contenders heading into Milano Cortina. 

They’re also multi-sport stars who must quickly transition from one sport to the next as soon as the weather changes. They often don’t have much of an offseason, and none of them will get to enjoy much of a break after competing at the Winter Paralympics in March. 

That’s because they’ll need to start training for the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics almost as soon as they return home from Italy. 

“LA 2028 is definitely on my focus,” said Masters, who’s a world champion in both Nordic skiing and cycling. “And I’m already into talks with my (cycling) coach of, ‘Hey, here’s my training plan for going into Milan, and how is it going to transition to the season coming after Milan towards LA and cycling.’” 

Over the years, Masters, Pike and Gretsch have gotten accustomed to the grind that comes with being Paralympians in more than one sport. After the coronavirus pandemic forced the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics to get postponed one year, they had only six months to prepare for the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. 

Pike (Nordic skiing and track and field) and Masters (Nordic skiing and cycling) are a Paralympic power couple that has competed in every Summer and Winter Paralympic since 2012. They’re both expected to qualify for Milano Cortina, which will be their eighth consecutive Paralympics. 

Unless they’re recovering from an injury, Pike and Masters train year-round and must find ways here and there to enjoy some time off. 

“I take breaks driving cross-country from where we’re stationed in Bozeman, Montana, for the winter season and just kind of built-in breaks a little bit,” Masters said. “But it’s more just like mental breaks, and we have like a month of unstructured training, where I’m still training, staying fit, but I’m not doing the exact workouts and hitting the exact hours. And then after the month from the two seasons, then it transitions to very tailored training.” 

Gretsch, meanwhile, is looking to compete at her fifth consecutive Paralympics in Italy. She’s a seven-time Paralympic medalist in Nordic skiing and triathlon, and she admitted it was easier to enjoy being at the Paralympics when she was younger and didn’t feel as much pressure to medal. 

“Obviously, the further into sport I’ve gotten, that pressure has built and it’s really easy to get kind of wrapped up in all of it of like, ‘I have dedicated four-plus years of my life to this one race. It’s only going to happen this one day,’” Gretsch said. “And it can get really stressful. 

“I think that’s one of my goals, especially for this coming (Winter) Games, is really to try to balance that out. I don’t want to take away the pressure from the competitions. I want to go there, and I want to perform really well, but I want to be able to enjoy the experience, too, and not put as much pressure on myself — or kind of like that stressful pressure, I guess.” 

Dani Aravich, who’s also a member of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team, understands how challenging it is for Gretsch, Pike and Masters to continue competing at both the Summer and Winter Paralympics. 

Aravich, who ran cross country in college, made her Paralympic debut as a sprinter in Tokyo and then competed in Nordic skiing in Beijing. Afterward, she retired from track and field to focus on cross-country skiing. 

As she was juggling both sports, Aravich said Pike, Masters and Gretsch helped her realize it was possible to go from the Summer Paralympics to the Winter Paralympics.  

“Coming into this, I thought I was only going to do track and field. I started training with the hopes of qualifying for Tokyo, and that’s when skiing got introduced (to me),” Aravich said. “I had no idea if it was possible (to do both sports), but luckily those three athletes already on our team are kind of the standard of how people who can balance the summer and winter training. 

“And so, I was so lucky to have these three to be able to look to, and we got to be together in Tokyo and then together in Beijing. … They have just done such a graceful and beautiful job of balancing two really hard things, and it’s been so incredible to get to watch them.” 

Aravich joked that she “failed” her three teammates by deciding to retire from track and field instead of attempting to qualify for the 2024 Paris Paralympics. Competing at the Winter Paralympics is enough for her. 

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.