Bryce Bennett (USA) has an issue with Ramon Zenhaeusern (SUI). Not because he’s talked smack about Bennett. Not because he skis for a rival nation or has defeated Bennett on the slopes. In fact, the two compete in totally different events.
The problem stems from the fact that Zenhaeusern, a slalom specialist, is listed at a whopping 6-foot-8, eclipsing Bennett by an inch.
“They’re fudging the numbers, he’s not that tall,” Bennett declared. “I rode the T-bar with him in Zermatt. I’m way taller than him.”
“Wait, really?” I asked him.
“No, he’s tall,” he responded, followed by a hearty laugh. “I have more of an American look, like I wear baggier clothes, and he has the full Swiss fit. It’s just tight. Tight pants, tight jacket, so it makes him look really tall.
“We should hold an official measurement. Get an actual doctor, the whole thing. We could start beef.”
Your move, Ramon.
Within five minutes of talking to Bennett, one realizes how sarcastic, funny, competitive and thoughtful he is. Qualities not gleaned from watching him race in a downhill or super-G. Although, given his physical stature, catching him in his element is a sight to behold. It’s like encountering a tight end or a power forward charge down a snowy mountain at 85 miles per hour.
Skiers aren’t usually Bennett's size, but he makes it work. He’s one of the longest tenured Alpine skiers on the U.S. Ski Team, has two World Cup victories, four world championship appearances and is about to participate at his third Winter Olympics.
100%, this will be my last Games. If I sit down with you to do an interview in four years, just be like 'Dude, you promised.'
Bennett is not a medal favorite in Milan Cortina. But the idea of knowing it’s a last time doing something is rare, especially at age 33. It’s an opportunity to reflect and to grow, something Bennett has done throughout his life: in skill on the piste, in height (he puts the 6'7" in “six-seven”) and maturity as a husband and father.
Bennett's quest for gold officially begins on Feb. 7 in the downhill at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio, but the journey to his final Olympic moment began long before that.
A tall boy among boys
Bennett is one of those always-has-been-tall guys. He recalled playing pee-wee soccer in 5th grade and towering above the rest of the kids on the pitch, so much so that he drew attention from an unlikely source.
At the start of a match, one of the referees said he planned to keep a close eye on him. Because he might outmuscle the other players? Or that he was a secret 8th grader in disguise?
“I was like dude, what are you talking about? I’m 10.”
In middle and high school, Bennett was recruited multiple times to join the basketball team. Par for the course for any tall student. He wasn’t interested. Football and volleyball didn’t appeal, either.
He preferred BMX racing, a sport that involves riding a bike around a dirt track that contains jumps and banked turns. The bikes themselves typically are small and feature a low, sturdy frame with high handlebars since much of the pedaling happens out of the seat.
It’s not really a tall person’s game, let alone a super tall person. One might come across a 6-foot-1 competitor — like two-time Olympic gold medalist Maris Strombergs (LAT) — but more often they’re around 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10. In other words, roughly a foot shorter than Bryce.
Bennett’s need for speed didn’t stop with BMX. He loved skiing, skateboarding, snowmobiling and motocross.
“For whatever reason, my parents were never into, like, traditional American sports,” he explained. “Growing up in Tahoe, you're just surrounded by these alternative outdoor sports. Like we would try and surf the lake when it was windy. We were always outside.”
Bryce’s mom worked for 30 years at Alpine Meadows, which at the time was a sister ski resort to Palisades Tahoe (the two merged in 2018), California’s largest ski resort. It was located a few miles south of his hometown in Truckee.
He, along with several members of Team USA — including AJ Hurt (USA), Nina O’Brien (USA) and Keely Cashman (USA) — threw down their earliest runs at Palisades. It was a hot bed (cold bed?) for the country’s best skiers.
The proximity to the mountain brought with it an inevitability: that Bennett’s love for the sport would snowball.
"How you grew up in New York, you just know the subway system, right? I just know skiing, and my parents knew skiing."
Bennett learned to ski when he was two years old and quickly excelled on the slopes. He raced competitively and would go on to win multiple junior national titles as a teenager.
Nothing could slow Bennett down. Except for himself.
The 33-year-old revealed he was a “wild kid” who had zero respect for authority. And if he didn’t respect you, he didn’t listen to you. He’d fight other students and find himself suspended from school. If there was a line, he’d happily (and defiantly) cross it.
There are things that happened at some ski races where I would say things I shouldn’t have said and get in trouble for it. I look back on it and I’m embarrassed of how I acted.
Bennett didn’t detail what exactly he did or said, but he personified the “bad boy” archetype. It culminated toward the end of high school, when he hit a bottom. He didn’t make the U.S. Ski & Snowboard team after two years of tryouts. He nearly quit the sport altogether, electing to spend the summer roofing and building houses.
He hated it. So much so that it gave him the motivation to change certain aspects of who he was. As did Konrad Rickenbach, Bennett’s ski coach and someone he considers a mentor.
“That combination of things, getting a reality check and his guidance, helped me find some gratitude. Be super grateful for the opportunities I was afforded growing up.
“I just started seeing the world in a different perspective, of being nice to people and having respect and living a life that I would be proud of. Pursuing those goals had a huge impact for me in my ski career.”
A leader in progress
Leadership doesn’t come naturally for everyone. That, self-admittedly, includes Bennett. For years, he was the young guy on the U.S. Ski team, (figuratively) looking up to his peers: Andrew Weibrecht, Marco Sullivan, Steve Nyman, Travis Ganong (a fellow Truckee native) all retired over the course of Bennett’s time on the squad.
Now he’s one of the veterans. He often thinks about his responsibility to lead and provide mentorship in a sport that’s inherently individual. Skiers stand in the start gate by themselves. They carve down the piste alone. They rack up World Cup points and try to make Olympic teams by way of their own success.
And yet, Alpine skiers travel and train as a team. From the months of October through March, they spend more time with each other than their families. The “me vs. we” dichotomy exists in a number of winter sports.
“I'm a big free-will guy. Everyone should make their own decisions,” Bennett said. “When people make mistakes and come to me and start asking questions, that’s the time I interject my opinions.
“Other times I try to lay down the law. It can come off as pretty harsh, I’m trying to get better at it. I just think keeping the tradition of American speed skiing, and what it has been and what the generations before us paved, is important.”
It’s a greater purpose.
Bennett is serious when it comes to honoring the legacies of Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves. He also realizes that fun is what keeps the team close. That’s why he decided to reintroduce an old Alpine skiing institution: fantasy football.
Coaches, athletes and technicians were all in the league.
Bennett admittedly knows nothing about the NFL. During the draft, he’d ask Austin Savaria (one of his coaches) who to select. Savaria nicely obliged, sabotaging his own draft, in the process.
Throughout the football season — which lines up nicely with training camps and the first half of the World Cup campaign — Bennett proposed the “most ludicrous trades” just to get a reaction. On one gondola ride in Austria, he asked for a teammate’s phone to check the weather, only to secretly try to pull off a trade while he wasn’t looking. It didn’t work.
“I think it was great for the whole team. It got everyone involved. We’re all naturally super competitive, and it gave us an excuse to just make fun of each other.”
The winner of the league, River Radamus, one of the top American Alpine skiers, received cash. The loser, Tristan Lane (USA), who skis in the European Cup, must dye his hair as punishment. The color has not yet been determined but Bennett promised that "it will be terrible."
Bryce finished 7th in the league out of 12.
"For a guy who doesn't know a single NFL player, not bad!"
Blessing and a curse
The life of a tall guy is generally pretty good, but there are downsides, too. For example, he often doesn’t fit into the starting gate, an area he takes off from every race. He has to duck. The gate in Wengen, Switzerland, requires him to wiggle his body to the front.
There’s also the gear issue.
When I started pursuing skiing at a high level, I quickly figured out that the equipment was not made for me.
The Olympian has size 15 feet, but he wears a size 12 ski boot. Skiers often size down because a snug boot provides stability, a more efficient energy transfer when carving and better overall control.
That said, three sizes small is three sizes small. He can’t squeeze into them without the help of Philipp Lackner, a technician employed by Fischer Sports (the apparel brand that reps Bennett).
“This is my third winter working with Bryce,” Lackner said. “The guy who worked with him before me told me it’s the most difficult boot to deal with. He had to show me exactly what to do, and I wrote it all down on a piece of paper.”
It takes 24 hours to perform successful surgery on a pair of Bennett’s boots so that they're ready to race. The process involves heating up the plastic and punching out the toe box area via a hydraulic pressure machine. Then, Lackner grinds down the plastic to create a compact, yet comfortable amount of space.
The canting also is crucial. That involves adjusting the boot’s angle to align Bennett’s lower leg and knee directly over the ski. It ensures the ski sits flat on the snow, optimizing grip and power.
“I make three or four pairs per season,” Lackner shared. “It's really difficult, but it's a cool project.”
There are a number of variables that impact capability on the slopes: boots, yes, but also skis, suit, snow surface, visibility, temperature. What about the size or height of the athlete?
According to Bob Poehling, the Head of Sports Science for U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the answer lies within the principles of aerodynamics and friction.
“Being tall, your arms are longer, your torso is longer, everything is longer,” Poheling explained. “That means there's just so much more opportunity to catch wind, which you want to kind of minimize as much as possible.
Think of an F1 car versus a semi-truck. The semis have a ton of that cross-sectional area, so they're just less efficient. The more surface area you have facing the wind, the slower you're going to be.”
Although Bennett's surface area increases resistance, an unwanted factor, his higher degree of mass also should increase his speed. For downhill and super-G skiing, velocity is the name of the game.
Poehling pointed to the six-time Olympic medalist Miller, who was 6-foot-2, and the 12-time World Cup winner Rahlves, 5-foot-9. Their statures were different, but they both found success on a global level.
“I don’t know that there’s necessarily an ideal height,” Poehling offered. “Skiing is a skill sport. You have to be a good skier, ultimately. The question is more about how do you gain the most and lose the least on all these other variables. Gear and technique are so important.”
Bennett’s longtime technician Leo Mussi raves about his technique.
If you watch any great giant slalom or slalom skier, you’ll see their midsection and chest areas hardly move. Meanwhile, their legs and head swing in opposite directions like a pendulum when carving in and out of gates.
In the speed events, tucking — crouching with a flat back and knees bent — is pivotal as it lowers the center of gravity and increases speed. So is turning (without braking or over-edging) and gliding in between turns. Bennett is strong in each facet.
“Bryce is not made for skiing with that height, but he’s really, really balanced on the skis, which is impressive,” Mussi said. “He's always balanced. If you look at him and how he skis, it looks boring. He doesn’t make any crazy movements.”
One last Games
Now more than ever, Bennett is working to find the right balance. He and his wife, Kelley, welcomed a baby girl (Kate, aka “Kitty Kate”) in the spring of 2025. (She made a cute and impromptu appearance during our video chat.)
The couple planned the timing of the birth to coincide with Bryce's offseason.
When training for the 2025-26 Cup campaign rolled around, Bennett had to leave his wife and daughter. The U.S. Ski Team travel to the southernmost city on earth: Ushuaia, Argentina. It’s a place from which people that venture to Antarctica frequently depart. For those three weeks, Kelley played the role of single mom.
Shortly after returning, Bennett again switched hemispheres to train in Chile with the squad. Then it was off to Europe. The various voyages all occurred before the season even started.
The bulk of his events were (and still are) in Europe, so he, Kelley and Kate rented an apartment in Innsbruck, Austria to live there for a while.
You do what you have to to make it work.
“Obviously you have to sacrifice an immense amount to make an Olympic team or ski race at this level because you're on the road all the time,” he reflected. “Like, I’ve missed countless weddings.
“But I've never wanted to sacrifice my entire existence for sport. One, I don't think that's healthy. And two, I'm not a psychopath.”
World Cup wins are great, Bennett has two of them. So is representing Team USA at the Winter Olympics. Those types of accomplishments bring immense joy, but the joy is fleeting. Family lasts forever.
Bennett realizes the end of his career on the slopes is approaching. Still, he loves skiing as much as ever. He loves going fast. He loves the fear it brings him.
Bennett claimed he’s “super scared every time” before a run. He gets sick to his stomach, and he thrives on it. If he doesn’t feel that pit, it’s going to be a bad day.
When people have those butterflies or that nervous feeling, they try to get rid of it. I grab it and embrace it, baby.
There’s only so much you can control on the mountain. Preparation, technique, equipment, attitude.
“I do a lot of archery,” he said. “This is a wild comparison, but the mechanics of it seem pretty easy. You put your pin on the target, you pull the release and it should hit the target every time. It doesn't. And the more you focus on aiming better, the worse it is.
“You have to be a passenger of the aim and let it happen.”