Hannah Kearney: Olympic Gold Medalist

The Sydcast

Episode Summary

Hannah Kearney is an Olympic Gold Medal Winner in freestyle skiing. She’s won 46 World Cup races. And now she’s retired, and ready to reflect on what it’s like to be the best in the world and how you come down from that high to live a productive, and energizing, life.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Hannah Kearney

Hannah grew up in Norwich, Vermont, and was introduced to Freestyle skiing through the Ford Sayre after-school program at the Dartmouth Skiway. She went on to win Olympic gold in 20210 and a bronze in 2014 in mogul skiing. She also won 46 World Cup competitions and 6 World Cup Overall Mogul titles during 13 years on the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team. Hannah completed her freshman year at Dartmouth by attending each spring trimester during the last few years of her athletic career. Upon retiring in 2015, she moved to Park City and graduated from Westminster College with a Marketing degree. Hannah now works in development for the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Foundation; she trains young athletes in the gym and founded Fitness From Afar to teach virtual workout challenges.

Insights from this episode:

• The Beijing Olympics
• What determines a score in skiing
• Skills and techniques in skiing
• How Hannah learned skiing
• What she loves about skiing
• When she knew she was good at skiing
• The role of role models in Hannah’s skiing
• Hannah’s failure in skiing and bouncing back
• Mental health issues in athletes
• What happens leading up to the race

Quotes from the show:

• “I enjoyed that adrenaline, and I think it allowed me to perform better. You know adrenaline can be a pressure that paralyzes you or can allow you to perform better. And just like being an athlete, I sort of embraced it, and I think it made the experience more interesting” —Hannah Kearney [8:01]
• “I was 16 years old; I was a sophomore at Hanover High School when I both made the U.S ski team and when back flips were permitted in the sport” —Hannah Kearney [19:06]
• “One of the things I love about skiing is it's one of the few Olympic sports that’s also a lifelong sport, and not just a lifelong sport; tennis and golf would fall under this category, but its a family sport” —Hannah Kearney [22:11]
• “I do think there’s some belief by the people around me, my parents and my coaches, that helped me excel cause they thought I could be good, so they gave me the attention. I, in turn, also took that, and I wanted to work really hard” —Hannah Kearney [26:31]
• “Even the best athletes in the world, Mikaela Shiffrin is certainly one of those; nobody has a 100% winning percentage. So, inevitably, there’s going to be stumbling blocks along the way” —Hannah Kearney [32:59]
• “If you are in these sports that are so acrobatic and skill-based, that pressure then creates physical symptoms where you are unable to perform your best” —Hannah Kearney [37:25]
• “Whether it’s because it’s like the nature of the sport or it’s whether the way that I was driven, I was very self-centered, I suppose, and I say that hopefully not in a bad way, but just, I was so focused on what I needed to do to improve week after week, especially towards the end of my career where I was winning fairly consistently” —Hannah Kearney [49:46]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Hannah Kearney

Instagram: Hannah Kearney (@hannahakearney)

Twitter: Hannah Kearney (@HK_Ski)

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.