Keely Cashman, born in Sonora and raised in Strawberry, remembers skiing at Dodge Ridge since she could walk and doing her first race on skis at the resort near Pinecrest when she was 5.
Now she’s poised to compete at the pinnacle of her sport against the world’s top alpine skiers at the 2022 Winter Olympics at Yanqing National Alpine Skiing Center, near Zhangjiakou in the Yin Mountains, about 120 miles northwest of Beijing, China.
“It’s pretty crazy, something I’ve been working toward my whole life,” Cashman, 22, said Tuesday, speaking with The Union Democrat by phone from Zurich, Switzerland, before she flies to China late Wednesday. “It’s been a lot of work year-round. I’m pretty excited and I’m really proud of being from Tuolumne County.”
Cashman was preparing for her Olympics debut in Europe, where two weeks ago she finished 23rd in an international World Cup super giant slalom event in Zauchensee, Austria, her best result of the season, to qualify for the U.S. Olympics team for the first time.
She is ready for the slopes at Yanqing, where she hears from teammates already in China that the alpine skiing venue for this year’s Winter Olympics, “it’s really, really cold there, and it’s really, really windy.”
All the snow is man-made, and that’s fine with Cashman.
“Even where snow is natural, the race courses are always groomed smooth,” she said Tuesday. “It makes a big difference, because man-made snow is drier. It’s a good thing. Drier snow and colder temperatures make the snow compact and hard, and we like that for racing.”
Growing up in the Mother Lode, Cashman attended the old Pinecrest School and then Summerville High as a freshman and played volleyball when she was first beginning to train, ski, and compete on the World Cup circuit in Europe.
When she had time between skiing, training, and studies, she fished at Pinecrest and went fly fishing downstream from Strawberry on the South Fork Stanislaus. She and her friends mostly did catch-and-release, but sometimes she’d keep one or two, season them with salt and butter, and wrap them in foil for the grill.
She said her favorite food between training and racing sessions is artichokes and sometimes “a good steak.” Her favorite breakfast place in Tuolumne County is Alicia’s Sugar Shack, and she loves the BLTs and steak salads at The Standard Pour.
You can take the athlete out of Tuolumne County, but you can’t take Tuolumne County out of the athlete. Cashman graduated from high school through Mountain Oaks Charter School, with the class of 2017.
These days, she’s accustomed to reaching speeds of 65 miles per hour in super giant slalom events, and 80 mph in downhill events.
“A lot of the top athletes are not from a smaller, tighter community like Tuolumne County,” Cashman said. “I’m really proud being from there, the sense of community and you know everybody. Everybody back home knows me since I was born. Maybe they’ll be watching at the Strawberry Inn, maybe the Steam Donkey.”
Cashman, whose nicknames include “CashMoney,” is scheduled to compete in three alpine skiing events: the women’s super-G on Feb. 11, women’s downhill on Feb. 15, and women’s combined on Feb. 17.
Her dad, John Cashman, is stoked for his daughter’s chance to compete on the global Winter Olympics stage. He and his wife are planning to watch Keely compete in China from an Olympics watch party organized in Park City, Utah.
“We’re extremely proud and super excited for her to get there,” he said Monday, speaking by phone from Palisades Tahoe, formerly Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. He’s the ski team head coach at Palisades. “It’s been a lifelong dream for her, since she was a little girl.”
His daughter’s first Olympics, he believes this will be a great experience for her as an athlete and as a person. There are a lot of veteran athletes on the current U.S. Alpine Ski Team, and there are many veterans among her international competitors.
“She’s kind of the younger one, at 22,” Keely’s dad said. “Most of the top skiers at international level are in their later 20s.”
Super giant slalom, also known as super-G, and downhill, those are the speed events that require bigger, taller, steeper mountainsides, he said. His daughter was able to get more of that training at Palisades when it was still called Squaw Valley.
He wishes he could go to China to see Keely compete in person.
“I’ll be staying here unfortunately,” he said. “There’s no foreign spectators allowed because of the Covid restrictions. They’ll have Chinese spectators there but no foreign spectators.”
The U.S. government in December announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. The White House said no official U.S. delegation would be sent to the Games because of concerns about China’s human rights record. U.S. athletes, including Cashman, will be allowed to travel to China and compete in this year’s Winter Olympics.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are scheduled to be staged Feb. 3 to Feb. 19.
The super giant slalom event is not for the cautious. Super-G “combines the speed of downhill with more precise turns of giant slalom,” according to the International Olympic Committee and its website olympics.com. “There’s less vertical drop than the downhill and gates are placed closer together. Each skier makes one run down a single course and the fastest time wins.”
World Cup skiing is overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Ski, FIS, founded in 1924 in Chamonix, France, also known as the International Ski Federation in English.
According to NBC Sports, a total of 17 athletes — 11 women and six men — will represent the U.S. on the slopes at Yanqing at the 2022 Winter Olympics. A leader of the group is two-time Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin. She’ll be teaming with a mix of experienced veterans and young up-and-comers like Cashman looking for their first taste of Olympic action.
NBC Sports along with NBCUniversal has a $7.75 billion contract to air the Olympics through 2032.
Cashman is slated to compete in the following events at the 2022 Winter Olympics in China:
Feb. 11: Women’s super-G
Feb. 15: Women’s downhill
Feb. 17: Women’s combined
NBCUniversal’s Peacock premium tier platform will stream every Winter Olympics event live, as well as NBC’s primetime show and studio programming, with no pay TV subscription required, at a cost of $4.99 a month with ads, The Hollywood Reporter reported Jan. 5.
When are the opening ceremonies in Beijing? According to NBC and multiple news sources, opening ceremonies for the XXIV Olympic Winter Games are scheduled to begin at 4 a.m. Pacific time Friday Feb. 4 at Beijing National Stadium, also known as the bird’s nest. Beijing is 16 hours ahead of San Francisco and the rest of California.
How can I watch the opening ceremonies on television? NBC will air the opening ceremonies live, with coverage beginning at 3:30 a.m. Pacific on Feb. 4. NBC also will air a recorded version of the opening ceremonies in prime time starting at 5 p.m. Pacific, with focus on Team USA athletes, the parade of nations, and performances at the event.
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