Nina O’Brien is an Alpine skier from the United States who specializes in the technical events of giant slalom and slalom. She will compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics alongside 16 other athletes on the slopes of the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center.
The technical discipline specialist, finished the 2021 season 17th in giant slalom, the highest finish of any Team USA athlete other than Shiffrin.
O’Brien is an eight-time US national champion and a two-time top-10 finisher at World Championships, despite having yet to win her first World Cup podium.
She was into skiing since a young age as it was a popular activity for her as a child growing up in a skiing family in the San Francisco area.
“Every weekend, my parents would pile four kids and two dogs into the car and drive the 3.5 hours up to Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley)”, she stated.
O’Brien recalls her memory, “I loved those weekends – skiing with friends, ripping through powder, drinking hot chocolate.” She explains that skiing was more about having fun in the mountains than racing.
She moved to Burke Mountain Academy (BMA) in Vermont full-time when she was 13 and in eighth grade. At BMA, she increased her training volume significantly and was able to join the National Training Group when she was 15.”
In her junior and senior years of high school, she was able to ski with the NTG all over the United States and Europe. And at the age of 17-year-old, a senior in high school, she won her first US national title and qualified for the US Ski Team the following year.
She has only been moving forward with each step, bringing her closer to her goal of winning a World Cup medal.
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