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Jake Adicoff Hopes to Repeat Last Year’s Success in PyeongChang
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Friday, March 9, 2018
 

BY KAREN BOSSICK

Jake Adicoff says he’s been “skiing fast” for the past four years.

Now, as he gets set to compete in his second Paralympics, he just wants to relax.

“I’m definitely looking to win a few medals this time, and I’m coming in more relaxed than I was last time,” he said. “It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that it’s the Paralympics. But, at the end of the day, it’s just another set of races. The key for me is not to treat them as something special so I don’t get all worked up about them.”

Adicoff is one of 570 athletes from 48 nations competing in 80 medal events at the 2018 Winter Paralympics. The games kick off with opening ceremonies today—Friday, March 9—and runs through March 18 in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Adicoff’s races and other events, such as wheelchair curling, and sledge ice hockey, were televised during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. This year's coverage will be livestreamed, with some events televised on the Olympic Channel and NBC Sports Network.

NBCSN launches its coverage at 9 tonight. NBC will televise Day 1 coverage at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 10. It will also televise a highlight show at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 24.

To see the rest of the schedule, visit http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/2018-winter-paralympics-live-stream-schedule

Adicoff, who grew up racing for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Nordic Team, was one of 13 athletes named to the 2018 U.S. Paralympic Nordic Ski team.

The visually impaired 22-year-old will ski with guide Sawyer Kesselheim, a Bozeman, Mont., biathlete and cross country ski racer who won bronze in the 2017 Boulder Mountain Tour and who trains in Sun Valley during summer.

Adicoff competed with Kesselheim at a Paralympic test event in PyeongChang in March 2017, winning World Cup gold medals in the cross-country sprint and long distance races for visually imparted athletes. He also snagged a bronze in the cross-country middle-distance race in challenging conditions with wet, slow snow in which he and Kesselheim had to fight just to keep their skis moving.

The following week Adicoff earned a short-distance gold and middle-distance silver medal at the World Cup Finals in Sapporo, Japan.

“I like the courses at PyeongChang,” said Adicoff, who spent three weeks training on the trails around Galena Lodge during Christmas break. “The climbs are tough and the downhills aren’t too technical.”

Adicoff, a senior majoring in math and computer science at Bowdoin College in Maine, has vision impairments similar to macular degeneration.

His eyes were scarred before he was born when his mother contracted chicken pox during pregnancy. He can’t see out of the center of his eyes—he moves his head back and forth and side to side to get the full picture of the race course while skiing.

Adicoff uses a laptop computer with an enlarged screen. He reads with a magnifier. And he’s been known to miss the finish line, once going into the lap lane parallel to the finish line.

But his parents—Sam Adicoff and Sue Conner—have always insisted on him trying everything despite his difficulties seeing. They moved their family to Ketchum from San Jose, Calif., to Sun Valley when Jake was 5 to ensure their youngest got the personalized attention at school they thought he needed.

They included him in family events like the Baldy Hill Climb and bike riding. And they introduced him to both alpine and Nordic skiing in second grade. Jake spent seven years competing in alpine skiing before focusing on Nordic skiing.

In between his outdoor pursuits, he learned to create poetry at Boulder Mountain Clayworks and became an avid thrift store shopper.

It was Wood River Ability Program Director Marc Mast who took a young Adicoff to a Paralympics training camp at Soldier Hollow near Park City. A doctor determined him “blind enough” to qualify him to compete for a spot on the 2013-14 U.S. Paralympic team. And Adicoff found himself headed for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Jake has always been very dedicated to training, putting in the laps on snow and the time roller skiing, running and lifting necessary to excel, said his father Sam Adicoff, who heads up the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.

The 5-foot-9, 165-pounds Adicoff has turned in some impressive results against able-bodied  competition, placing 30th among 625 competitors in the 2014 Boulder Mountain Tour, and competing in the 2011 and 2013 Junior Nationals.

A 2014 U.S. Paralympics Nordic skiing national champion, he posted top 10 results in Paralympic World Cup ski races before breaking out last year at PyeongChang.

During the 2014 Paralympics at Sochi, he and his guide Reid Pletcher finished sixth in the 20-kilometer classic race and the 4-by-2.5-km. mixed relay, seventh in the men’s 10-km. free, eighth in the 1-km. sprint and 14th in biathlon. Adicoff used a special laser rifle connected to headphones that emitted a higher pitch as the rifle pointed closer to the target center.

Because of college, he hasn’t been able to compete on the World Cup circuit this year. Instead, he’s been racing every weekend on the NCAA collegiate circuit on the East Coast.

Skiing in the East means skiing under a lot of tree canopies, which is more challenging because skiing in and out of shade is more difficult for his eyes to adjust to.

“That can slow me down a bit, especially on downhills,” he said.

Adicoff expects his biggest competitor will be Canadian Brian McKeever, who has competed at every Winter Games since 2002 racking up 13 medals. The Russians, who will compete under the banner of Neutral Paralympic Athletes because of the country’s inability to comply with the World Anti-Doping Code, will also provide some stiff competition.

“I’ve gotten a lot stronger than I was in Sochi. And my racing is smarter,” Adicoff said. “I’ve put in a lot more training hours and a lot more meaningful training.”

Jake’s parents have traveled to PyeongChang to watch him race, augmenting it with a visit to Japan to ski the legendary powder of Hokkaido.

The couple also traveled to Sochi where they watched the Russian middle class out in force enjoying the games in Sochi in between coffee with lots of sugar and milk and pancake-like crepes.

“It was cool having the Paralympics in Russia because there were times in Russia’s history where they didn’t acknowledge people with disabilities,” Conner noted. “During the Paralympics we saw families with people in wheelchairs, and it was nice to see them out.”

This Paralympics will also prove somewhat of a milestone, as well, since North Korea is sending its first ever team. A 2006 United Nations report noted the country’s questionable record on human rights. People with disabilities in that country were often sent to collective camps, it said.

The athletes village had yet to be built when Jake was there last year.

“But the area was cool and the venues that were there were nice,” he said. “The trails are great.  They’re challenging--similar to the trails at Galena Lodge with lots of big hills, long steep hills.”

While it was snowing in PyeongChang on Thursday, there is the potential for conditions to be very warm in March. But Adicoff doesn’t mind.

“We were racing in T-shirts every day. And everyone was just out there having a good time in the sun,” he recalled.

If Adicoff can collect a few medals this week, there’s only one thing that would make it better.

“I’m in the middle of interviewing for computer tech jobs in the Bay area, so if I got a job offer in addition….”

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