“I don't have a life at the moment.”
Like most hopeful Winter Olympic athletes, U.S. men’s Alpine skier River Radamus has made plenty of sacrifices to his free time while training for the upcoming 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. But for Radamus, missing out on an Olympic podium and finishing fourth in two separate events at the 2022 Winter Games makes the fire burn white hot.
Since the end of the 2025 FIS World Cup season, Radamus has spent his “offseason” training nonstop. On typical days, he starts training at 6 a.m. with an hour-long mobility workout, which includes 100 push-ups, 50 pistol squats, 50 pogo jumps, and 35 minutes of core work. Following that, it’s seven or eight hours in the gym, including an hour or two of cardio.
There’s space in the day for an hour of journaling and a half hour of meditation in the morning and the evening. He is in bed at 9 p.m. at the latest.
While the routine sounds extensive, it is a vital part of Radamus’s life. He clarified that his routines are not trendy, TikTok influencer routines (he’s not drinking Saratoga water), but rather a normal part of his process-oriented approach to achieving his goals.
I feel like everything that I'm doing, everything I'm thinking about, everything I'm reading about, is all in service of bettering myself as a person, and I feel like I'm going in a good direction.
Routine is not unique to hopeful Olympic medal winners, but Radamus has a unique motivation to put his body through the ringer to achieve his goals, which he described as “unfinished business.”
At the 2022 Beijing Winter Games
In 2022, Radamus made his first Winter Olympics on the U.S. Alpine skiing team at age 23. Though the youngest on the men’s team at the time, Radamus was no stranger to success in his youth. His parents, professional ski coaches, paved the way for Radamus’s talent and drive in the sport.
At age 18, Radamus dominated at the 2016 Youth Winter Olympics, taking home three gold medals in the super-G, giant slalom and combined events, the same year he joined the men’s U.S. Ski Team. Additionally, Radamus won two events at the 2019 World Junior Alpine Skiing Championships. He blossomed into a naturally talented winner—one who faced the reality of the professional curve when he graduated from youth events.
When Radamus began skiing on the World Cup stage, he saw the level of competition shift. Athletes competing at the highest level of professional skiing had the natural talent Radamus took pride in, but they were stronger and in peak physical shape to perform on the mountains.
Even for an athlete as gifted as Radamus, tackling the physical challenges proved to be difficult. The skier explained that the access he had from his parents early on — exploring the mountains on skis where his parents coached simultaneously — helped him progress quickly through the sport while letting him skip a few steps.
While physical limitations were just one aspect of the heightened competition, the mental challenges of competing at the highest level became brand new.
“I didn't go through as much adversity, so I didn't have those battle scars to build up,” Radamus said. “I think that there was a time in the junior levels where I almost took pride in not being as strong or as physically prepared as my competitors, and being able to outperform them because of my talent.”
Fast forward to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. After the U.S. team secured three medals at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, only one U.S. athlete earned a medal in Alpine skiing in Beijing: Ryan Cochran-Siegle, who took silver in the men’s super-G.
The next closest to a medal was Radamus.
Radamus himself had been evolving on the World Cup stage as a skier, knocking on the door of the top-15 overall rankings. But no skiing experts could have guessed that he had the chance to claim a medal during his first Olympics appearance until his giant slalom run.
He finished under three-tenths of a second from capturing a bronze medal. Radamus, who had yet to reach the podium in any FIS World Cup event, had one of his best results to date happen in the biggest race of his life on the biggest stage of Alpine skiing.
Yet watching the podium ceremony at the bottom of the slope, Radamus felt gutted.
I had dedicated my entire life to preparing for that moment, to preparing for the Olympics, and had the posters on my wall and all the rest. I remember sitting there in the finish, watching the podium ceremony and just feeling like such a failure.
Later in the week, Radamus raced on the U.S. mixed team parallel squad. After upsetting the Italian team in the quarterfinal round, the U.S. fell behind 2-1 to Norway in the bronze medal match with their final skier, Radamus, up to the starting gate. Though Radamus won the leg and tied the match at 2-2, the U.S. lost the total time tiebreaker by 0.42 seconds.
While both losses stung, Radamus remembers waiting in the buffet line at the Olympic Village the day after the super-G competition. He heard one of the athletes who made the podium making a small off-handed complaint about the salad in the buffet.
“I remember just thinking to myself, ‘You got an Olympic medal, like you did it, man, like your whole life has changed. Why are you worried about the salad thing?’” Radamus said, recalling the moment.
A small moment made a big impact on Radamus’s outlook on his skiing career: Any result – whether it’s a World Cup podium or an Olympic medal – cannot wash away someone’s problems, nor can it ease the challenge of chasing goals as a professional athlete.
From a young Olympian to an "elder statesman"
Regardless of the burning passion to win an Olympic medal, which Radamus is adamant on being his ultimate goal, it’s less so about the results, which is why he puts the care into a rigorous and fulfilling offseason routine. Four years after missing out on a medal, he has become aligned with his personal and team goals ahead of Milan Cortina.
After being the youngest on the U.S. Alpine skiing men’s team in 2022, Radamus referred to himself as one of the “elder statesmen” at age 27 this time around; he will hit a decade of competition for the U.S. Ski Team in 2026. While Radamus has a hunger to complete his Olympic goals, he is incorporating ways to improve the team’s youth as well.
Radamus provided insight into the current team culture, one that he credited his mentors with showing him: leading by example, but without excessive mentoring. The “phony” leaders, in Radamus’s eyes, say the right things with words, but not their actions.
“I'm not going to beg you to go take another run. I'm not going to beg you to do another set,” Radamus said. “But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go out on a daily basis, I'm going to take an extra run, I'm going to do another set, I'm going to work so hard that you're going to feel guilty for not working as hard as me.”
He discussed the constant evolvement of the team’s chemistry and structure, comparing it to a "Laffy Taffy" or "sourdough starter" analogy: a little bit of every day’s batch factored into the following day. The team’s roster currently holds a mix of rookies and veterans: the speed team with veterans like Cochran-Siegle, Bryce Bennett and Jared Goldberg, and the technical team with younger skiers like Ben Ritchie and Jett Seymour. It allows them to continue to carry over the culture set by the team’s most successful skiers.
There is no leader. Everybody's equal, and we all are just showing up on a daily basis to put our best foot forward and lead each other.
Part of leading by example, Radamus’s elevated strength training comes with a purpose.
Recently, Radamus's status on the world stage has improved, the biggest moment coming in February 2024 on the FIS World Cup circuit. On home soil at Palisades Tahoe in California, Radamus had the best giant slalom run of his international career, clinching a podium spot in the giant slalom and finishing the race to the roar of cheering Americans. At the bottom of the slope, Radamus had a major reaction, letting out a few yells, a couple of fist pumps and spiking his ski pole like a touchdown celebration.
In the following 2024-25 World Cup campaign, Radamus characterized his season as full of change, including physical alterations, new coaches and skiing philosophies. Though Radamus did not land on the podium, he earned similar World Cup points from season to season, with the most coming from giant slalom events, followed by the super-G.
During the 2025 World Championships in Saalbach, Radamus became ill and lost around 10 pounds before the events. Still managing to ski through the physical and mental toll of the illness, he got sick again after worlds, losing a total of 30 pounds toward the end of the season.
"If you judge performance on that and judge yourself as falling short because of something that's outside of your control, that takes a toll monumentally and keeps you from reaching high athletic performance," Radamus said. "I think I take pride in the effort I gave."
Between skiing in all the events from downhill to slalom and the two illnesses, Radamus's body suffered a physical toll. Now, he has time to regain the weight; his current goal is to gain 20 pounds of muscle mass, which will help increase his base strength, a key factor in the change Radamus aims to make in his skiing philosophy.
During the two spring camps the U.S. team had at Mammoth and Copper, Radamus emphasized a new method of approaching turns with a stronger base, letting his natural finesse do the rest of the work through the turns. He has been known as a skier with natural flow, usually letting the skis do the work by throwing them toward the fall line. Now, slowly is introducing this method to be stronger and more commanding during turns to increase speed and control from the start.
With this new methodology to his skiing applied, along with his rigorous physical transformation, Radamus is doing everything he can to be in a position to reach the Olympic podium in 2026. He hopes that the process of achieving personal and team goals will make the results fall into place. Like many U.S. skiers before him, Radamus believes in his abilities as a big-event skier to win, which he's proven in his youth, the 2022 Winter Games and on the World Cup stage.
So while Radamus may not have a life at the moment, he uses his intense fear of failure as a motivator to keep him focused every day. Before training, Radamus had some time after the season to run youth ski camps organized by his ARCO foundation, which works to make the competitive sport more accessible to youth. Now, he's back to the lab to accomplish his goals, and he is enjoying the process.
"I've really come into this summer thinking I cannot forgive myself if I don't do everything I possibly can to put myself in the best position," Radamus said. "It's my absolute responsibility to myself to seek that out and see if I can accomplish it. I feel great about where I am."