STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Jake Adicoff is set to race in his fourth Winter Paralympics, which open today in Milan Cortina. And, amazingly, it will be the first time he’s skied in a Paralympics in an area with a legacy of skiing, the others having been in places like Sochi, Beijing and PyeongChang, which are not considered bastions of ski culture.

For Adicoff, there’s a bonus that comes with competing in the mountains of northern Italy. The 30-year-old coffee connoisseur from Sun Valley is constantly striving to make the perfect latte with his high-end grinder and espresso machine. And Italy’s is considered some of the best in the world.

Adicoff is hoping that espresso will fuel his quest for four gold medals as he and his guides—Sun Valley’s Peter Wolter and Reid Goble—compete in four cross country ski races between now and March 15.

Peter Wolter’s mother, Molly Goodyear, his father Mike Wolter and SVSEF Head Nordic Coach Becky Flynn will be among those cheering on Wolter and Adicoff at the 2026 Winter Paralympics.

Adicoff arrived at Val di Fiemme--the same place where Norway’s Johannes Klaebo won six gold medals in the Winter Olympics a few weeks ago—after training with the U.S. Paralympics team in Austria.

He arrived with three bags weighing about 80 pounds each, thanks to the 20 pairs of skis he carries on the World Cup circuit.

“This for Jake is the culmination of four years of intense training almost year-round. And it’s exciting,” said his father Sam Adicoff, who has seen his son train as many as 900 hours a year. “He’s at the prime age to be competing as aerobic capacity and strength peaks in men in their late 20s, early 30s. During summer he roller skied for two to three hours in the morning, followed by strength training in the gym six to seven days a week. The only down time he had was late April and May.”

Adicoff lost part of his sight when his mother contracted chicken pox during pregnancy. He is blind in one eye and can’t see out of the center of the other because of scarring in the middle of his retina. He moves his head side to side to get the full picture of the racecourse while skiing.

Jake Adicoff placed in the top 10 of nearly a thousand racers in the 2022 Boulder Mountain Tour.

He can’t drive but he can use a laptop computer with an enlarged screen and he can read with a magnifier.

His parents—Sam Adicoff and Sue Conner—moved their family to Sun Valley from San Jose, Calif., when Jake was 5 to ensure he got personalized attention at school. And they introduced him to alpine and Nordic skiing in second grade.

Jake spent seven years competing in alpine skiing before focusing on Nordic skiing. After he won a 2014 National Paralympics Nordic Championship, adaptive instructor Marc Mast took him to a Paralympics training camp at Soldier Hollow in Utah. At 18 Adicoff found himself headed for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

After earning a silver medal at the 2018 PyeongChang games in South Korea, he hung up his skis to work as a software engineer for Uber in San Francisco. But two years later when the coronavirus pandemic hit, he moved back to Idaho and started skiing again because it was something he could do while social distancing.

Sue Conner and Sam Adicoff, who dressed in their best Alps garb for Camp Rainbow Gold’s Share your Heart Ball, will be cheering on son Jake after having had to miss the Beijing games due to the COVID pandemic.

As he attained levels of fitness he’d never reached before, he felt the urge to compete again.

Since, he’s won a couple fistfuls of medals in Para World and Paralympics competitions. And last year he bested such Olympians as halfpipe gold medalist Chloe Kim and dual moguls medalist Jaelin Kauf to win the prestigious Paul Robbins Outstanding competitor of the Year Ward from the North American Snowsports Journalists Association.

He spent his offseason this past year training with the ski team in Sun Valley and Soldier Hollow.

“You have to find some joy in getting out there every day,” said Sam Adicoff. “It’s a long season--you’re traveling about seven months out of the year with four or five months of racing and a couple more of training.”

Jake Adicoff, right, took part in the SVSEF’s Olympic Day celebration.

Adicoff has placed in the top ten of the Boulder Mountain Tour skiing without a guide. But he’s also missed the finish line by skiing in the lap lane, instead. At the Paralympics he will draft behind his guide, gleaning information about the variations in terrain, including small rises and subtle turns.

Watching Wolter will be especially helpful in flat light.

The two work on cadence so Wolter doesn’t have to turn around.

“Jake has been in the sport for a long time, so he has a good perspective on what works for him and what doesn’t. We’ve been running, roller skiing and doing gym work together for the last three or four years, so we’ve gotten into a very good rhythm,” said Wolter, who began guiding Adicoff in Fall 2024 in Canmore, Alberta.

“Truly in the last three years the singular person I’ve spent the most time with is Jake. He understands how I ski and the communication between us is fairly minimal. If I go too fast, he’ll tell me to slow down, but there are plenty of times he tells me to speed up.”

Wolter is three years younger than Adicoff—he was a freshman in high school when Adicoff was a senior.  His parents put him on skis when he was 2, and he joined the SVSEF’s Nordic team when he was in second grade.

“Nordic skiing has very much defined who I am,” he said. “It builds good character, teaches time management and hard work. And it’s introduced me to my best friends—friends whom I will always be able to connect with for the rest of my life.”

Wolter came back to Sun Valley after racing at Middlebury College to join the SVSEF’s Gold Team, and that’s where he became good friends with Adicoff. The two have raced together in Norway, Italy, Germany and Poland, where they won two golds at their most recent outings.

“I was very impressed by the ski culture in Poland. You don’t often think of Poland when it comes to cross-country skiing. But they have tourist trails there and they were packed with thousands of people. And skiing in Trondheim, Norway, was cool because the race was paired with the Cross Country World Championship and there was around 20,000 people watching that race.”

Guiding has been more challenging than he thought, said Wolter.

“But, while different, it’s very fun because it turns what is usually a very individual sport into a team sport. Jake’s pushing me, we’re pushing each other. It can be very exciting in Para World Cup races when you’re bobbing and weaving between other athletes and guides. Now, we’re chasing the top of step of the podium in the Paralympics.”

Wolter has raced in a few World Cup races for himself. The course in Italy is difficult but, he said, one of the hardest, if not the hardest, racecourses in the Untied States is in Sun Valley at Lake Creek.

“Italy’s going to be a really great experience—some good hills, some long downhill stretches. Team USA is giving us clothes from Nike and Ralph Lauren. And, from what I’ve seen on social media, they have some really good pizza, pasta and lasagna in the Olympic Village, so that’s going to be pretty sweet.”

Wolter said the Paralympic experience will be the perfect capstone moment in a sport that has defined his entire life. He will earn a medal if Adicoff does.

“It would have been incredible for me to qualify for the Olympics, but that was not anywhere near in the cards. So, this is an equally cool opportunity where I get to experience the same. I love cross country skiing, but very few people love cross country skiing as much as Jake Adicoff. He loves training, he loves racing—he has a deep, deep passion for the sport and he has a strong mentality that can push through the hard sessions.”

Sam Adicoff said his son’s goal is to win four gold medals—one in the sprint, which is not his strongest suit; one each in middle-distance and long-distance races and the final in a relay.

“He was only 18 and just finishing high school when he went to his first Paralympics, so it’s been exciting to follow his journey and to be a part of it,” Adicoff said.

TWO MORE SUN VALLEY PARALYMPIANS IN MILAN CORTINA

Two other Sun Valley residents are competing in the Milan Cortina Paralympics.

Laurie Stephens, a SVSEF Alpine U14 IMD coach for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation, is a six-Time Paralympic alpine skier with seven Paralympic medals. She expects to run giant slalom and slalom.

Jesse Keefe grew up racing with the SVSEF. He placed ninth in slalom at the 2022 Games in Beijing, 15th in super combined and giant slalom and 22nd in downhill.

HOW TO WATCH THE GAMES:

The Paralympics can be watched on Cox Cable on Channel 24, CNBC, and on the USA Network. NBC will have primetime coverage on Saturday, March 7, and March 14. The games can be streamed at PeacockTV.com, NBC Olympics.com and NBC.com. See  https://www.nbcolympics.com/schedule for more information.