Call it a sign of the times. Multi-sport professional athletes of the past like Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson officially are all but extinct. The once well-traveled road of playing multiple sports and becoming an all-around athlete nearly has turned to dust. It’s been repaved by the specialization superhighway, which directs athletes to play one sport if they want the chance to reach the top. Olympic hopeful, Chloe Levins, however, chose the road less traveled and has been skiing and playing golf for 25 years at an elite level.
I'm super grateful to be a versatile athlete. I do not think children should be isolating themselves so quickly as they are in one sport. I think the more you can do for as long as you can do it, the better. Maintaining that versatility for as long as possible, I'm a true spokesperson for that.
Levins is living proof of her multi-sport philosophy. The 27-year-old competes for the U.S. biathlon national team. She believes her success as a biathlete was directly shaped by her experience learning, playing and now coaching the game of golf. “I think that the two sports are similar. There are parallels there between the endurance aspect and the mental aspect,” Levins said.
She said there's a large cross-over when it comes to the use and refinement of fine motor skills and the muscle memory necessary to be successful in both golf and biathlon. Levins also believes the level of mental fortitude necessary to succeed under pressure in each sport is comparable, especially when competition comes down to the wire. “The three-footer in golf basically represents the same kind of tension as we have in biathlon in the last stage of shooting. In the same way that someone can lose the Masters by bogeying 18, you can lose a gold medal by missing one shot in the last stage in biathlon," Levins said.
Levins credits golf with preparing her for how she responds to failure during biathlon competition and how she's able to shake things off. “So, you start off with bad shooting, and you have to go out and ski, you don't want to spend that entire lap thinking about what you just did wrong, right? You need to under react, reset and prepare for the next one. It's the same way in golf, if you hook your drive off the tee, what are you going to do? You're just going to mope for the four minutes walking up to your ball and finding it in the fescue, or are you going to think about how you're going to manage your variables and plan your next shot? Same thing,” Levins said.
The Vermonter first was introduced to biathlon, a sport derived from a Scandinavian military-training exercise, which combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, when she was 13 years old. However, Levins started cross-country skiing much earlier at age 2 — the same year she also started playing golf. To this day, she sees unmistakable parallels between her swing and her shot, and she continues to be heavily involved in both sports. “We have a shooting range in biathlon; we have a driving range in golf. We're hitting hundreds of balls; we're shooting hundreds of shots,” Levins said.
Despite her interest in biathlon as a teenager, Levins decided to pursue golf in college and followed in her mother Mary Anne’s footsteps, who played golf at Duke University and went on to be a professional golfer. “In high school, I kind of had the dream already of being a professional biathlete and then that's why I decided to play golf Division 3. I figured it would be my last time to compete in the golf world, until I was done with my biathlon career and seeing it as also a performance advantage in cross training and in the cerebral aspect,” Levins said.
Levins simply didn't play college golf, she dominated. She served as a two-year captain of the Middlebury College women’s golf team, was named the NESCAC Player of the Year in 2019 and won two individual league championships during her tenure. Levins excelled on the golf course, all while pursuing her studies and her career as a professional biathlete.
She was named to the U.S. biathlon national team in 2018 and since then has competed in four world championships and made her World Cup debut in 2021. In addition to her biathlon training and competition schedule with Team USA, she works in golf. Levins was hired in 2024 to return to her alma mater as an assistant coach for the women’s golf team at Middlebury College and continued her life-long multi-sport balancing act.
Now, the IBU World Cup season is underway and Levins is competing for Team USA with the goal of making the U.S. biathlon Olympic roster to compete at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.
The first World Cup stop on the circuit was in Oestersund, Sweden from Nov. 29 through Dec. 7. Levins competed in every single event during the opening competition of the season, except for the single mixed relay. The highlight came for her in the mixed relay when Levins and Team USA placed sixth overall. The finish tied the Americans' best result in the event since 2011.
The IBU World Cup season continues in Annecy-Le Grand Bornand, France on Dec. 18.