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Date: 3/8/2022
CUMMINGTON – Laura Sullivan spent most of February in China, officiating at the Winter Olympics, perched on ski slopes almost as steep as cliffs. What made the job hard? The accident she had a year ago.
While skiing in February 2021 the 58-year-old fell and “hit something just the right way,” she said. “I snapped the ball off the top of my femur, the way I landed … The lifts closed and I was fortunate (a friend) saw my car in the parking lot and came to find me.”
Sullivan, a Cummington resident and alumna of Mount Holyoke College, began rehabilitation from the hip replacement and returned to officiating, a part of her life since she was in her 30s. The commissioner of the International Ski Federation in the United States, Paul Van Slyke, recommended her for the honor of officiating in Yanqing.
The flight to China was very long. After leaving the tall buildings of Beijing, Sullivan grew intrigued by the vast tree farms surrounding the city, each devoted to a single species. Subsequently, she learned from her husband the area is a desert with little water.
The sports complex was so new GPS systems couldn’t find it. A child, a Chinese girl living in Boston, interpreted for the bus driver. Sullivan said many students from Beijing University, English speakers with technical chops, helped deal with problems related to the events.
“The GPS never really got there. I think we did circles for four or five hours,” Sullivan said.
In a typical day, Sullivan’s alarm clock went off at 5 a.m. After breakfast she caught a gondola to the tech venue, farther up the mountain than the ski slopes, and in the jury room was given a radio. On the slopes, officials checked snow depth on the course, measured distances between the gates, made a careful ‘step-check’ of the course, and checked to see that no members of the media chose to perch in a dangerous spot.
Sullivan worked several functions. She served as jurist, part of a team that judged competitors’ runs, and also served as video control, a position that confirmed skier performance.
On the first day skiers had to prepare for the downhill race, 19 competitors were disqualified. On the second training day nine skiers were disqualified, a very unusual situation. Sullivan said the course was very fast and skiers were not making all the gates.
Racers “weren’t making the gate, going to the gate, because of the speed they were having,” Sullivan said. The courses were extremely steep, but the athletes did not seem phased by the inclines. Rather, the problem was a lack of familiarity with the course, a side effect of the coronavirus pandemic that caused the cancellation of last year’s World Cup race in Yanqing. “They didn’t have a chance to know what the hill was about … where the fall-aways, the pitches were, where the challenging parts would be.”
Sullivan officiated for the women’s slalom, giant slalom and combined races, which have elements of both super giant slalom and downhill races. The games went off with very little controversy. The Cummington mother and wife felt bad after American competitor Nino O’Brien fell near the end of her run.
“I didn’t know the serious part of her accident until after,” Sullivan said. “But I knew right away there was movement up on the mountain, so I called the start-stop.”
Most evenings, Sullivan attended a seed meeting, a meeting of team captains and race officials. The starting order of the racers, “the bibs, the running order, the draw” and any other technical details were discussed, along with who would perform which jobs, start times and where practices would take place. After a busy 12-hour day in the cold, done with dinner, Sullivan didn’t have much energy to sightsee.
“My daughter would be proud of me,” Sullivan said. “I learned to use my chopsticks much better.”
Sullivan, who loves the physicality of skiing – “It’s almost like dancing” – enjoys the cold air, the sunrise, the chance to stop thinking. She also still loves the simple pleasure of skiing well, “The feel, as my father said, of the two-by-fours under your feet and how you make them work.”
Sullivan got the chance to make her skis work as soon as she got back to Cummington. Her husband’s college team made the national skiing competition. They hurried north to meet the team for a training in Vermont.
“If you can dance in your ski boots you can do anything,” Sullivan said. “The best part of the day is being up on the mountain before the lifts open and you … see the sun rise and nobody else is there. Skiing down while nobody else is there is a beautiful thing.”