Laura Sullivan’s breath rose as a mist into the beam of her headlamp.
The sun crept over Whitehorn Mountain and the Slate Range at Lake Louise Ski Resort in Alberta, Canada. Temperatures hovered around minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit that early morning before the FIS Alpine World Cup ski race. The churn of the chairlift hadn’t started.
“It’s very quiet. You look at the beauty of what’s happening on the hill. That’s the best part of it,” said Sullivan, a Cummington resident and Mount Holyoke graduate. “The best part of my job is to be on the hill when the lifts aren’t open and you have a headlamp and the sun is rising. That’s pretty clear, but that’s the best part of my job.”
Her job is an alpine skiing technical delegate: the event’s highest ranking official responsible for overseeing that all rules and procedures are followed to run the race properly and fairly. That ranges from timing and scoring paperwork to monitoring snow conditions and gate placement. She’s on the hill from 6 a.m. until “whenever it ends.”
“There’s a lot of prep ahead of time. You have to check what’s happening on the hill with the person who’s at the hill, check what’s happening with the snow conditions,” Sullivan said. “Who’s in place, what official’s in place. When you get there you have to check the equipment, the protection, the snow conditions, the gate, who’s vetting the course.”
Sullivan has administered races all over the world at the national and international levels. She was selected as part of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games jury in Beijing, a five-member staff that includes a technical delegate, chief of race, start referee, finish referee and video controller. No American woman – and only one other woman ever – has performed the duty.
“I did not think about it a lot. But I do reflect on the people that supported me in getting there,” Sullivan said. “If it matters, I would hope more women would look at that and say, ‘that’s something I would like to be involved in.’ That’s important to me.”
That support system includes trailblazing women who paved the way like Anna McIntyre, one of the first women to officiate at the international level. The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Famer first identified Sullivan as a potential international official.
“She was a ground breaker. She was a tough woman,” Sullivan said. “She had to do a lot more.”
Sullivan also noted the men in her life that supported her like her husband Mark Sullivan and Paul Van Slyke, a member of the U.S. Alpine Ski Committee and an international skiing federation subcommittee. Van Slyke nominated Sullivan to work the Beijing Games three years ago, and she was accepted.
“I had more support from men than anything. I want that to be noted because that’s really important,” Laura Sullivan said. “They were 100 percent behind me.”
Ski racing has always been a part of her life. Growing up in the 70’s, Laura Sullivan and her family split time between their house in Springfield and a ranch in northern Vermont. Her father was part of developing condominiums at Burke Mountain and bought the land in the area. They spent all summer up north and a few months during the winter.
“In the 70’s, it wasn’t normal,” she said.
Laura Sullivan, 58, has been a ski official for 30 years. She and her husband, who is the ski coach at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, heard there was a shortage of officials for collegiate ski races that they were attending (Laura was Mark’s assistant at WPI. “All geeks, I love them,” she said).
“One day driving home in the car we said ‘how hard could it be? We should find out how to do it,’” Mark Sullivan said. “Before I knew it we were going to our first educational clinic. Now she writes the educational material for the clinics.”
They received their national certification to oversee events for U.S. Ski and Snowboard in the states. Both of them were nominated to be international officials a decade later.
“If you make the wrong call, the whole world is gonna know,” Mark Sullivan said.
Laura Sullivan has remained involved in the education aspect of officials and produced much of the material the U.S. uses to train new officials. When she finished the project a dozen years ago, Mark Sullivan told her she’d be an official at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang.
She laughed, a full, deep chuckle that precedes many of her sentences and told him “that would never happen.”
“Korea came and went, and it looked like I wasn’t right,” Mark Sullivan said.
When Laura Sullivan was originally nominated, she wanted to keep the news quiet because she wasn’t sure the Beijing Games would happen. It would look foolish to make a big deal out of going if the Olympics didn’t happen.
Typically officials go to the site for test events in the two winters preceding the games. Both test events were canceled because of COVID, and the fate of the Olympics appeared precarious.
“She was feeling good in her decision not to mention it to anybody,” Mark Sullivan said.
It wasn’t until early last fall that she allowed herself to start believing she was going. She put off packing until the night before because she felt like doing it too early could jinx her chances. A positive COVID test could shut down the whole dream.
Laura Sullivan left for Beijing on Feb. 3 and will be there until the 24th. She knows some people that she’s worked with on the World Cup circuit and who helped set up the events in China.
“That is very comfortable,” Sullivan said. “Just a few. It’s going to be almost a shot in the dark.”
All Olympic athletes, officials and workers – roughly 60,000 people – are in a closed loop made up of three bubbles in a roughly 100-mile radius. Each of the bubbles encloses a sporting venue and includes hotels, conference centers, worker dormitories and other facilities. Sightseeing won’t be an option.
“They’re COVID conscious, which is really good. There’s things I wish I could do, but I can’t like going to the [Great] Wall of China,” Sullivan said. “I think the whole culture in China is something that I would’ve loved to explore. But I respect what’s happening and I respect what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to make sure they’re containing things, and that’s OK. That’s OK.”
Unlike most major events, Mark Sullivan hears from Laura most days or a few times a day through a text when she’s waking up or going to sleep. She sends him photos of where she’ll be so he can look for her on television.
Laura Sullivan will be overseeing women’s events, and her duties may change on a daily basis as a member of the jury. She served as the finishing judge for the slalom and giant slalom, and was in that role when Charlemont’s Paula Moltzan finished eighth overall in the slalom earlier this week. She hadn’t received her assignment for the speed events (Super G, downhill and combined) yet.
“I’m going to be honest with you, it is not easy. Most women stay out of it. They might be smarter than me,” she said, letting out another prolonged laugh.
Being available for so many different tasks requires a level of flexibility and organization Sullivan had to hone. She appears organized to the people she works with even if she doesn’t always feel like it in her personal life. Sullivan was a fine arts and art history major at Mount Holyoke, she offers as context, laughing.
“But I had twins 22 years ago,” Sullivan said. “Between doing that and doing this, I’ve had to be incredibly precise.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.