By David Goodman

Paula Moltzan is rocking back and forth in the start house like a cheetah straining to break free. Below her is an icy white carpet dotted with race gates. She is at the top of the GS race course in Soelden, Austria, the first race of the 2025-26 World Cup alpine ski season. Moltzan has spent months working out in the woodshed behind her house in Waitsfield, clawing her way back after shoulder surgery. Now in the start house, she closes her eyes and pumps herself up. "Be super dynamic," she tells herself.

Then a familiar voice breaks in. "I believe in you," says Ryan Mooney, her husband and race technician.

Moltzan explodes from the gate. She catapults out of the first turn, sharply angulating so that her hip is just inches off the snow. Carving aggressively through the fall line, she propels herself rhythmically around the gates. Suddenly, halfway down, she loses her balance, her outside ski skidding out, as the crowd below holds its breath. But incredibly, she recovers her equilibrium, barely missing a beat, and attacks the remainder of the course with singular focus.

Moltzan streaks across the finish line and thrusts her fists skyward in joy. She has the second fastest first run, besting a powerful women’s field that includes her teammate Mikaela Shiffrin, the winningest World Cup skier of all time. She is awarded the silver medal, just behind Austrian Julia Scheib, who she trained with all week.

Moltzan has just landed on her sixth World Cup podium, her best ever finish in a giant slalom, and nearly her first career World Cup win. It is the perfect start to a season that she hopes will culminate in a return trip to the Olympics. It has taken years of triumph and disappointment to get here. Now, it’s Moltzan’s time.

Defying Convention

I find Moltzan and Mooney at their home in Waitsfield, Vermont, which they purchased earlier this year. They met as teenage ski racers training in Chile some 15 years ago and have been partners on and off the mountain ever since, getting married in 2022.

When I arrive, Moltzan takes a break from signing U.S. Ski Team baseball cards with her image. She will autograph 1,000 of them by day’s end. "It makes my hand cramp," complains the woman who bashes gates while rocketing downhill at over 50 m.p.h.

Moltzan, 31, has charted an unusual course to skiing stardom. She grew up weaving through gates at Buck Hill, a small ski area just outside Minneapolis with an outsized impact on ski racing. There, she met the legendary coach Erich Sailer, a mentor to other future Olympians, including Lindsay Vonn.

"He told me I was as slow as a turtle," Moltzan chuckles warmly as she recalls her first sessions with her childhood coach, who died in 2025 at the age of 99. "And he told me, ‘There's so much more to be than just good. You can be a great skier instead.’"

Moltzan took that to heart. She launched from skiing laps under the lights at Buck Hill to make the U.S. Ski Team and win a gold medal in slalom at the junior world championships in Norway at age 20, becoming the first American woman to win the event.

But a year later, poor World Cup results cost her her spot on the U.S. Ski Team. She was devastated. "It was heartbreaking. I was really upset. But then I just kind of flipped a switch in my brain and was like, okay, what's my next step? What am I doing to make myself a better person? How can I move forward from this?" She decided she was done with high level ski racing. She would go to college and become a doctor instead.

I ask Mooney how Moltzan picked up the pieces after such a disappointment. "I think her determination and grit and the unconventional path that she's had to get to where she is now says a lot about her character," he says, looking admiringly at his wife. "She can overcome huge emotional battles and keep forging forward."

Mooney decided to follow Moltzan to the University of Vermont, where he raced on the ski team. She figured she too would race just for fun, while getting her pre-med credits. But UVM ski coach Bill Reichelt saw a rare talent.

"What’s so special about her as a ski racer is that she came to UVM a well finished product—she had the speed and technical ability before she arrived on campus," Reichelt says. "The college environment helped her find the consistency to perform within herself, which not only helped the team she cared so much about but also gave her the confidence to know she could make second runs and now podiums at the World Cup."

Moltzan instantly took the college racing scene by storm. She won the NCAA women’s slalom title as a freshman. "It was validation that I was still a very good skier," says Moltzan. Being kicked off the U.S. Ski Team, she reflects, "was the best thing that ever happened to me."

The Spruce Peak Connection

At UVM, Moltzan rediscovered the joy of being on skis. Much of that occurred on Main Street, the storied race course at Spruce Peak, UVM’s home course, and an NCAA Ski Championship venue. "Stowe has a piece of my heart because I grew up skiing here through my whole college career," she says.

At age 27, Moltzan rejoined the National Team and made her Olympic debut at the Winter Games in Beijing in 2022, the oldest first-time U.S. women's alpine skier in the Olympics in 74 years. She finished eighth in slalom and fourth in the team parallel event.

Just before competing in the 2025 World Cup finals, Moltzan needed somewhere to train. She asked Igor Vanovac, director of the Mount Mansfield Academy—a ski racing club catering to everyone from local kids to aspiring World Cup and college athletes—if she could practice at Spruce Peak, and he quickly agreed. "There's truly not a better GS hill in the entire world," Moltzan says about Main Street. "The snow is usually phenomenal."

As a World Cup athlete, Main Street is the ideal place for Moltzan to hone her skills. "It’s so magical because of the way it turns and curves. Similar to the World Cup, there's all sorts of terrain built into it: pitch, flat, steep—it's always changing," she says. "It’s lucky to have something that can replicate a World Cup hill so close to home. Not many people have that in the U.S."

What’s more, Moltzan can now upgrade her woodshed workouts. As a new member of The Club at Spruce Peak, she has access to top-of-the-line wellness and training facilities, from therapeutic massage and targeted sports treatments at the Spa to antiinflammatory hydrotherapy and contrast-temperature Cryo T-Shock technology. The Club fitness center features Technogym equipment and the Outrace R2-5, a highly-customized functional training station emphasizing strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility. It’s all ideal for sustaining elitelevel training and optimizing recovery.

Moltzan skied from Spruce Peak to the podium at the 2025 FIS Alpine World Championships, where she got a bronze medal in GS and placed fourth in slalom.

Her win capped a season of a dozen top 10 finishes, but the competition has been fierce; Moltzan has spent much of her career racing against Shiffrin, a ski race icon. The two women have cheered each other on through highs and lows. "We've been skiing against each other since we were like 12," Moltzan says. "To be living through an era in which there's someone that talented in ski racing is amazing." She quickly adds, "It's also just tough. You're competing against the best every single day."

Building Her Community

Moltzan’s teammates are her biggest supporters. "She is one of the most determined athletes I know," says U.S. Ski Team member Nina O’Brien. "I’ve seen her put in the work on and off the hill, day in and day out, and when she gets in the start gate, she brings a confidence and willingness to send it that I admire."

As hard-charging as she is on the slopes, Moltzan is warm and personable in her downtime, with a laid-back demeanor and ever-present smile in her eyes. "As a teammate, she always makes life on the road feel a little more like home," O’Brien says. "She’s the one baking birthday cakes from scratch, organizing holiday gifts, and getting everyone to play games." Even though she is likely the fastest skier on the mountain on any given day, it’s not uncommon to see her and Mooney sharing a cheese plate at the bar apres-ski or helping a young skier zip up their coat after a cocoa break at the Club at Spruce Peak.

Off piste, Moltzan has found a new way to spend her downtime. Traveling to New Zealand for race training this past summer, she toted her clubs along and spent plenty of time on the greens with Mooney. When she’s home in Vermont, she hits balls with fellow Club members at the newly renovated Stowe Country Club and Mountain Course, and played in the Folk & Fairways event at Spruce Peak with another breakout Vermont star, musician Noah Kahan.

Moltzan is sponsored by a number of Vermont companies, including Lawson's Finest Liquids; Skida; Bag Balm; and Northeastern Reproductive Medicine, where she is using her platform to talk about reproductive health options for elite female athletes.

Moltzan is open about the challenges of family planning. She’s not ready to hit the brakes on her ski racing career, which is still peaking, yet doesn’t want to put her fertility in jeopardy by waiting too long to have kids. "This issue is extremely stressful, and so under-talked about [among athletes]," she says. "You don't even want to acknowledge that it's a real thing, because you want to be at the top of your game, and not act like something is going to hold you back." In April, she plans to freeze her eggs, a move to support her current career without compromising her future family. For now, she is charging toward the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy with confidence. "I feel like I can become the best in the world."

Paula Moltzan Career Highlights

World Championships

• 2025 • Bronze medal in giant slalom in Saalbach, Austria
• 2025 • Fourth place in the team combined event and team parallel event
• 2023 • Gold medal in the team event in Courchevel, France
• 2015 • Finished 20th in slalom at the Beaver Creek World Championships

World Cup

• 2025 • Secured her first World Cup giant slalom podium in Kronplatz, Italy
• 2025 • Finished second in the World Cup opener in Sölden, Austria
• 2025 • Third place slalom in Sestriere, Italy
• 2024 • Third place slalom in Soldeu, Andorra
• 2022 • Semmering, Austria second place in slalom
• 2021 • Achieved her first World Cup podium in the parallel event in Lech, Austria
• 2015 • Scored her first World Cup points (25th) in slalom

Collegiate and Junior

• 2017 • Won the NCAA slalom title.
• 2015 • Won a gold medal in slalom at the Junior World Championships in Hafjell, Norway

Olympics

• 2022 • Placed eighth in slalom, 12th in giant slalom, and fourth in the team event at the Beijing Winter Olympics

US Nationals

• 2022 • National Champion in slalom
• 2022 • National Champion in giant slalom
• 2024 • National Champion in giant slalom