I don't remember when I started skiing. It was a family sport. I know I started when I was very young.
In the 1970s, my parents started the ski club at our local mountain. I have an older brother and an older sister. I was the baby of the family. By the time I came around, it was a ‘put her on skis in diapers’ kind of thing. To be frank, it's just what we did every weekend.
I often say, and it's the truth, that I don't know if I would have chosen ski racing.
It was sort of chosen for me, and I'm not complaining about that—I'm grateful for it. But I'm more passionate about other activities, to be honest. That's a bit of a twist for most Olympians, I think, but I fell quickly in love with the competitive nature of racing itself.
I am that athlete—type-A, driven-in-all-things, strong work ethic. I also had an older brother who was on the national team before me, so I had a very clear pathway in terms of the next steps that I wanted to achieve.
But I didn’t have that traditional “look up to ski racers in the Olympics” mindset. I just wanted to be like my brother.
And I became very strong at it at a young age. I was fully committed by 14 or 15, which, in hindsight, is indicative of what happened to me with my abuse.
Back in those days, this would have been the mid-1990s, it was quite common for Alpine skiers to not even graduate high school. I was shipped away to a bigger mountain town in order to be able to travel at the same time that I was doing high school.
Now we know that competitive athletes at this age are very vulnerable to predatorial maltreatment. In my case, although I will never put this on my parents, I also did not have a very strong familial support system around me, because I wasn't living at home. I was living alone literally by the time I was 15 or 16.
We traveled extensively with our coaches, with very few safeguards in place.
I was also conditioned. Much like the dancers I work with now, who are conditioned to be touched by adults, I was conditioned into thinking it was normal to be in a hotel alone with a male coach by the age of 13 or 14.
I met the Coach who abused me, for the first time a year prior to his becoming the coach for our team. He was coaching young girls across the country at that time.
When I look back from a ‘trauma lens,’ and through all the EMDR therapy I've done, certain things stand out. I remember the first time I saw him, he skied past me. Everyone was sort of talking about him back then because he was “the man”—the best coach the region had ever seen—and he had this grandiose arrogance about him.
I have far better language to characterize him now, based on my work in narcissism and trauma. But at that point, it was just obvious that he was high on himself.
I even noticed in that moment, which again was not uncommon at the time, that he would slap girls on the rear end with the ski pole—just boundary breaches that we didn’t have words for at the time. So I just felt kind of creeped out by him. But, at the same time, it felt like there was an aura around him, already, that we all kind of wanted to be in his good books.
When he took the job with the National team, he said, “I'm bringing a girl with me,” and back then, we didn't think it was weird. In hindsight, it was one of his survivors, and although she had qualified, he wouldn't take the role here unless she was on the team. It was a package deal, so to speak.
It’s a classic move. I see it all the time in the cases I work now.
I educate on it with a term called The Toxic Triangle. As a coach, he had so much power and subjective decision-making, and instead of encouraging athletes to get along with each other, he encouraged us to try to get his time because skiing is an individual sport. He created an environment that was overly sexualized, and overly focused on him, not peer-to-peer.
How it felt for me was that, if I'm in his good books and I'm his favorite, I'm going to ski fast.
If I think about it outside of my own direct experience of emotion, it's actually quite fascinating how he managed to manipulate us. That's what other people don't want to talk about. Larry Nassar is not a dumb person, right? And my coach wasn’t either. He is incredibly intelligent—and a true, sociopathic, malignant, narcissist—to his own admission.
There were five of us being abused by him out of 10, and none of us knew of each other, because his mental isolation techniques were far superior to his physical isolation techniques. He didn't really need physical isolation, because we were all just there. He could go and do whatever he wanted with us.
He would tell me horrible things about one of the other survivors to prevent us from speaking to each other, and vice versa. So he created toxicity amongst the girls that he was abusing, so we would never catch on. In hindsight, I could have literally gone around the room mentally pointing, like, He's doing it to her, he's doing it to her, and he's doing it to her….
But when I blew the whistle on what happened to us, I knew of only one other athlete he’d been abusing.
The athlete that actually confronted him 17 years later when he was finally arrested hadn't, until that day, acknowledged that she was his first victim, as we understand it. Because the abuse started when she was much younger.
I think in my brain, I must have somehow known she was also a survivor. But ironically, she and I created a strong friendship. We went through 10 years on the World Cup team together, and she still never said anything about his abuse until about 7 years ago.
That's how deep it was for her.
I honestly didn't even acknowledge my own level of victimization until I found out about all the horrible things he'd done to others. Among survivors, that’s probably more common than we think: It's not that bad until we hear of something that our own weird bias around trauma thinks is worse.
I'm very mindful about that when I educate because there's no such thing as ‘worse’ or ‘better’ trauma, right? But when I heard about some of the things he'd done to very young girls, I recognized honestly what was happening for the first time.
It's like I woke up out of the cult.
At the time, I felt like I couldn’t get away from him, but also that no one would understand, because I could physically get on a plane if I wanted to. My body would respond with anxiety and heart palpitations. I would feel hot and get sick to my stomach.
I have an extremely strong intuition that I've always sort of pushed down in my life to make my brain convince me of things. Now, I always tell people: Your brain will tell you you're wrong, but your gut never lies.
In my mind, I had put sexual abuse in the category of a stranger behind bars scenario, based on movies and media. My direct experience was very much one of coercive control. He controlled my brain. He controlled how I thought. He could have said, ‘jump off a bridge,’ and I would have.
The psychological abuse was far harder for me.
It got to a point where if I tried to pull away from him or dump him, or whatever language was being used at that time, he would tactically stop coaching me or ignore me. He would not enter me into races.
But even that would affect me less than the other psychological things; the shunning and the not looking at me. He would talk badly about me to the other girls on the team and try to turn them against me.
Then I was sort of pushed into finally disclosing what was happening. It was 1998, and we were at the biggest event of the year and they hired a female physical therapist. I had been physically showing signs of abuse for probably three or four months, but nobody was noticing, including me.
She took one look at me, my hair loss, and my extreme weight loss, and she knew something was up.
Even then, I might not have said something. It wasn’t until I saw him going in for the next girl, who was a good friend of mine. And at that moment, I didn't care about me anymore. The damage was done, and I was already starting to emotionally pull away from him. To me, it seemed he was going to punish me for that distance by starting to groom my friend.
Honestly, I disclosed because of what I thought he was doing to this other girl, or starting to do. Once I shared everything that happened, that friend came to me one day, and she was crying. She just said, “I was next.”
And I said, “I know you were next, which is why I said something.”
During that same conversation, two other girls walked into the room and said it was also happening to them. That was the first time I realized that this was far more vast than just me.
I'm sure many survivors of Larry Nassar would also say that they were shocked when they realized how many victims there were at USA Gymnastics. I work with survivors and disclosures now, in my job, and I support them as a mentor in criminal cases and civil cases. I can tell you, with these kinds of serial offenders, it happens all the time.
But that wasn’t the end of it for us.
After he knew I’d reported him, he wasn’t immediately removed from the house where we were staying. When a narcissist of this nature knows they've been caught, they'll go to all lengths to try to get you back in. He decided to double down.
He took me into the woods for six hours while he threatened to commit suicide (which I know now is a common maneuver from perpetrators to threaten suicide). Afterward, I remember I went back into the house, and the physical therapist that I disclosed to asked where I was.
She said I was totally glossed over. I just said, “Oh, we need to protect Coach.”
She kept asking me what he had done to me. I said, “Just please, don't leave me alone with him, because I can't be trusted. And don't ever let him see me cry.” That’s what came out of my soul. That’s what I needed.
I realize now that he had brainwashed me again. It wasn’t that “he” couldn’t be trusted. It was that “I” couldn’t be trusted. And I knew I couldn't show him any weakness; I had to hold this position, because if I showed him weakness, he was going to come in again. So that's where the “no tears” came in.
That’s when skiing NGB finally showed up. I was pulled into a bedroom at the house with Coach and the man who was the head of the organization and told to be quiet. They said they were going to remove Coach from the house, and that the damage was already done. So he left.
It was basically, ‘Alice, if you say anything to anyone, you’ll lose your career, we’ll lose our sponsors, and you’ll ruin your teammates’ lives.’
Later there was a bigger meeting, and I think there were about 12 underage or 18-year-old athletes present, and they asked us, ‘So, who else was sleeping with him?’
It was very much positioned like a bunch of girls were having an affair with their coach.
Coach, meanwhile, never had his coaching license taken away. The organization allowed him to resign.
I took the blame for what happened.
My teammates and fellow survivors wanted someone to hold accountable that wasn't him, and they blamed me. We were all sent on the road together a week later, and I faced extreme bullying and ostracization from them. And, in the meantime, Coach never left Europe. He waited in Frankfurt, Germany, until two of the other survivors arrived to get onto the plane home with him.
I'll never forget when I got to the Frankfurt airport, where we were all splitting up and going on to our various home country destinations. I walked in, and I had that familiar feeling again in my gut like I was going to throw up. And then, there he was, sitting in the waiting area for the plane. He dropped his newspaper down, looked up at me, and winked.
Like, I can't make this shit up.
After that, my career continued for almost another decade.
I was actually diagnosed with an extreme eating disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, complex PTSD, substance abuse disorder, and generalized depression and anxiety after he was finally arrested when I sought out my own therapy and support. For ten years, I skied with those issues but was never offered the proper level of mental health support because the organization didn’t acknowledge the trauma that was caused and if they had provided me and others with that support, that would blow their cover. I suffered in silence. That is actually how I was presenting when I went to the Olympics and became an Olympian.
We had sports psychologists on contact, but how it was positioned to us at the time was that they were there to “manage the environment.” Again, it felt like the organization had this to support them more than me.
It’s funny because I don't even really remember who I was before this happened to me: I put on this survivor suit of armor. I became incredibly selfish. I spent no time with family and friends. Coach had me convinced that I couldn't succeed without him, so ultimately, what drove me to success was showing him that I could.
I remember standing on the World Cup Podium for the first time, and I knew I was on TV, and I wasn't even happy about the race. I was just in my brain thinking about him because I knew he was definitely watching at home.
Instead of being like, I'm one of the best skiers in the world, I was just like, Take that, you asshole.
For me, it was basically a 20-year ordeal. After Coach was finally caught, my teammates and I went from trial to criminal trial. Eventually, we had our forgiveness circles and our restorative healing, and we’ve all come to a better place. But my entire being changed so much in those two decades.
In the end, the PTSD I was diagnosed with centered more around the extreme ostracization, lack of support, and self-blame that resulted from my abuse, not the abuse itself.
As for my parents, I don't think my dad could access what happened to me until Coach was arrested. He and I have a great relationship, but we're not, like, super deep conversationalists like many Gen-Xers are with their parents.
After the arrest, he had this lightbulb moment, and he started to cry.
I said, “Dad, stop! I don't blame you for any of this. You didn't know.”
I had downplayed what happened in my own brain, let alone what I was willing to tell other people, including my parents. But I was also still dealing with a lot of self-guilt and blame, and things were complicated in my victim brain. Especially when it came to my mom.
Today, I have three children, and even though I wasn't a mother then, I actually remember feeling like, How could my mom not do anything about this?
My mom passed away in 2007. Her wife, Heather, didn't tell me the truth until after she died because my mom swore her to silence. But it turned out that after everything came to light about the abuse, my mom had been consistently calling the skiing NGB with phone calls and emails, asking what they were going to do about it.
I was still competing at the time, and my mom was told that if she continued to push it, or if she went to the police on my behalf, she would ruin my career. My mom, who was so stoic and strong, went to her grave without me knowing that she had been advocating for me. I only realize now that she had always loved me fiercely in her own way.
All of these things were in the background when I decided to file a civil case against Coach and the skiing NGB for their culpability in my abuse. To this day, I think it was the best thing I ever did.
It wasn’t about the money. You won’t find a survivor that ever says anything about money, because accepting it is the hardest part. It’s like, well, ‘Alice's worth this amount,’ or ‘this is what her trauma is worth.’
For me, it was about the validation.
It was the final closure I needed to get credit for what happened to me, and the fact that no one helped me because no one was willing to acknowledge that Coach did not just resign.
When Coach was arrested in 2015, being the narcissist he is, he prolonged his criminal trial for more than two years. He’d try to get bail, or hire and fire his legal counsel. During the time, I was set to have my baby Scarlett, who's now seven, and he kept stalling the proceedings hoping that I'd literally be in labor and unable to testify.
Instead, I took my daughter to court when she was two days old. I was still wearing the hospital diapers, and my brain, my guts, and my hormones were all over the place. But I was like, “No, bro, you don't get to control my life anymore.”
He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison, although he was released early during Covid. In total, I’ve been involved in legal proceedings of some nature from 2015 to 2023—it’s been eight years of this.
I retired from racing in 2008, and in the years that followed, I had three children. I'd just be out there, being a mom, and—whammo! I’d get a cold call from an unknown number, and it's the police, or someone in the judicial system, and they’d need something from me.
I had to find a way to cope and still raise my children and live my life, not knowing if, at any moment, someone was going to call me and want to talk to me again about this horrible thing that happened in my life.
I started therapy seven years ago. At a certain point, I woke up and went, ‘Oh my God, Alice, this was bad! This was really bad, and I don't think you've dealt with the really bad.’
But I realized that every time I share this stuff, it's so helpful to me.
I founded an organization which aims to eliminate maltreatment in sports. When I get to work with other survivors now and help them understand their own emotions—with mental professional help, of course—what I find is that if they are, say, going through a criminal trial, they don't want to talk to victim services. They want to talk to me.
Because I’m never going to sugarcoat things. When I educate teenage girls, I can speak to them from a place of honesty. I know it's not normal, for example, that I felt that way toward a man who was that much older than me. A man that was bald and not attractive, when, really, I should have been dating a boy my age and sending notes back and forth under my school desk.
I know the lengths I had to go to finally understand that this person was not my boyfriend and that I was not getting married to him and having a farm. And that he was saying such things to five other girls at the same time.
I know the level of self-blame and shame that can come from these feelings is extraordinary.
I think that's a piece of this that’s important: We have to have way more respect for the survivors that come forward. If you haven't lived it, you just don't know. And there's no such thing as consent in sports. If the person has a position of power over you, and whether or not you think it's your boyfriend, or whatever—it’s zero consent, it doesn't exist.
I’m not here to trauma-dump on people, but I’m often informed by my own experiences in my work. Last year, I removed a coach from an environment during a case, and I made sure the organization tracked this person all the way back to their country of origin. That's something that you would never think of if you hadn't had my lived experience.
I'm very mindful, too, that no one has to feel comfortable speaking about what happened to them. The only challenge I would ever put out there to survivors is, is not speaking about it holding you back from healing?
About a year ago, I took time away to seek mental health support. I'm always self-aware of my own mental health, and I know re-traumatization is a hazard in this work. What I also know now is that this is my life’s purpose. If it means that I work three days a week because I can’t do six, then so be it.
I get to work with survivors and organizations, and I will speak to anyone about their stories. I will help any organization to do better—whether they've had abuse or not in their sport, I don't vilify.
And, ironically, my relationship with sport is the best it’s ever been.
