Gus Schumacher has been dreaming about the Olympics for most of his life. As an elementary-schooler, he and a friend would pretend they were competing in the games after ski practice on the trails around Anchorage.
“When I was younger, it wasn't just like I wanted to go to the Olympics," he said. “I wanted to win the Olympics.”
Now he's the U.S. men’s cross-country ski team’s best hope to bring home an Olympic medal in Italy next month. That’s something the team hasn’t done in 50 years.
Of course Schumacher wants an Olympic medal. That’s what he’s been training for, he said. But he thinks about success differently than he did as a kid, when he wanted to be the best skier in the world.
“Those aspirations are still there,” said the 25-year-old, “but are not what I'm hanging everything on.”
Learning to lose
The most important thing, Schumacher said, is whether he does the very best he can. If he doesn’t win, he has so many other races ahead of him.
His longtime coach, Jan Buron, thinks Schumacher grew into a great skier partly because he learned that lesson early. It’s important to get comfortable with losing, Buron said. That creates resilience that keeps kids coming back.
“I was able to convince Gus that losing – this is not shame,” he said. “This is part of the game. This is part of your world. That you will lose.”
Buron, who grew up in Poland and speaks with a distinct accent, has coached Schumacher for almost 20 years. From the beginning, he saw something in the skier.
“He was fit. He has good technique,” he said. “And, you know, he was follow orders.”
Buron is the founder and coach of Winter Stars, a ski club in Anchorage that has sent half a dozen skiers to the Olympics. They all have one thing in common, Buron said: determination. Schumacher was determined, even at 8 years old. He was driven. And he was having fun.
“If kids start enjoyment of this process, I just smile, because this is easy job for me then,” Buron said.
But it wasn’t a straight line from driven 8-year-old to Olympic medal contender.
At first, Schumacher said, his hard work kept him at the front of the pack. But then in middle school, his competitors got bigger and he did not. He was working harder than they were, but they were still beating him.
“My parents and coach were like, ‘Yeah, like, it's not always gonna be super easy,’” he said. “And they were always like, ‘You know, it's good that you're getting beat.’ And I was just like, ‘No, it's not. Like, it sucks.’”
That’s the moment a lot of kids quit, Buron said. He was afraid that would happen with Schumacher. He spent a lot of time trying to teach him that the best way to win is to accept that sometimes, you won’t.
Something shifted after that, Schumacher said. It changed the way he thought about success. That helped him eventually start racking up wins.
A remarkable record
In 2020, he became the first ever American to win a gold medal in an individual race at the Junior World Ski Championships. In 2024, he became the youngest American to win a World Cup cross-country ski race. Since then, he’s been on the World Cup podium four more times, including twice last week in Switzerland.
At the 2026 Winter Games, he’ll be one of eight Alaska Nordic skiers competing. They all ski for Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center and they make up half the 16-skier U.S. cross-country ski team.
Schumacher’s parents will be at the Olympics, cheering him on. They’ve also had a big impact on how he thinks about success. They supported him instead of pushing him, he said.
His mom, Amy Schumacher, said the approach was a conscious decision.
If her son had a rough race, she’d focus on how hard he tried and how much fun it was to watch him ski. Then she’d send him back out to cheer on his teammates. Even if he was feeling bummed, she said, he still had to be a good person.
“I don't think pressure works in most situations,” she said. “You just want to support them, and you're happy when they are happy.”
It’s clear she still puts a lot of work into supporting her son.
She watches his races all season long, she said. Even when they’re happening in different time zones, she’ll get up at 3 a.m. and text him afterward.
At home in Anchorage a few weeks before the Olympics, she looked through a stack of old photos she printed out to make a little book of encouragement for him. It’s something she does for all three of her adult children whenever they go away, with pictures and notes to ground them and remind them they’re loved.
Schumacher is glad his mom will be in the crowd next month, with the rest of his family. They help him stay calm and centered. He’ll need it, he said. He’ll definitely be nervous. But he knows what his coach will tell him:
“You've done everything, you're in a great spot. Just ski like you ski.”
