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Kikkan Randall
One of the Most Popular Cross-Country Skiers in American History & Breast Cancer Survivor
Kikkan Randall
One of the Most Popular Cross-Country Skiers in American History & Breast Cancer Survivor
Biography
One of the most popular cross-country skiers in American history, Kikkan Randall is an athlete that has appeared in five Winter Olympic Games. In addition to her gold medal in Pyeongchang in 2018, she has won 17 U.S. National Titles and made 29 podiums at the World Cup.
Born in Salt Lake City to a family of several successful winter athletes, Randall split her childhood between Utah and Anchorage, Alaska. In 2002, Randall made her Olympic debut at just 19 years old in her hometown of Salt Lake City. She returned to the 2006 Games in Turin and earned a ninth-place finish in the Olympic Sprint, the best-ever finish for an American woman. After finishing third in the 2010-11 Sprint World Cup standings, Randall saw some of her most successful years yet. She became the first American woman to ever top the Sprint standings in 2011-12, and she won four World Cup freestyle sprint events during the 2012-13 season. Randall appeared in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi before taking time off for the birth of her first child, Breck. In 2018, Randall and Jessica Diggins became the first American cross-country skiers to win an Olympic gold medal, placing first in the women’s team sprint in Pyeongchang.
Randall has broken several records throughout her career. She was the first American female cross-country skier to record a top ten finish in a World Cup competition and the first American woman to win a medal in cross-country at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships.
A passionate advocate for winter sports, she has spent time as a member of the International Ski Federation’s Athletes Commission and the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission. A member of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame, Randall was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent radiation treatments in 2020. With five Olympic appearances and two decades of success, Kikkan Randall is an unbelievably special athlete.
Speaker Videos
Making Team USA
Meet Team USA: Kikkan Randall | Sports Illustrated
Behind the Scenes With Kikkan Randall
Speech Topics
Motivational
Kikkan Randall likes to motivate people. Whether it’s encouraging others to chase their dreams or to live a healthier lifestyle, she can share tips and tricks for breaking down big challenges into manageable steps.
Teambuilding
Randall has always believed that she can be at her best when she helps those around her be at their best. During her ski career, the sport went from no US women’s ski team in 2006 to Olympic medal favorites in 2014 and 2018. Along the way, the team cultivated a supportive and cohesive environment that inspired not only the US Ski community, but what they did became a model for other World Cup teams.
Perseverance
It took Randall five Olympic Games and 18 Olympic starts to finally win that elusive first gold medal for the US Ski team in cross-country skiing. Over the course of 20 years, she experienced many setbacks, from a blood clot in 2008, to Olympic failure in 2014 to a stress fracture in her foot just months before the 2018 Games. The journey to success is a rollercoaster of ups and downs and it took perseverance to finally reach that top step of the Olympic podium.
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