Cameron Smith isn’t your typical Olympic athlete. He didn’t grow up dreaming of skiing in the Games; in fact, his chosen sport — ski mountaineering — won’t be eligible as an Olympic event until 2026. Smith didn’t even love skiing as a kid; living in the flatlands in Rockford, Illinois, his athletic interest revolved around running. Only occasionally did he get to the little Midwestern ski hills. Nevertheless, Smith exemplifies how carving out your own way as an athlete can lead not only to record-breaking success, but also to a balanced, fulfilling lifestyle.

While most Olympic-bound competitors have at least one coach, Smith prefers to skip coaching in favor of following his own body wisdom and academic knowledge. With a degree in exercise science from Western Colorado University, he escribes to scientifically based training, from working out in the gym to biking, skiing, skinning and running; it’s just a matter of when he does each activity. If he’s psyched to mountain bike, he’ll put on the miles, but if he’s tired from work, he’ll dial it back a bit.

In addition to not growing up as a skier, he faces a couple of hurdles European skimo athletes do not. First, he works full time at the Adaptive Sports Center in Crested Butte every summer. Second, he doesn’t live in Europe, where skimo is popular. To address the first, he lets his internal drive — along with an early alarm clock — steer his day.

“I think my success isn't in spite of having balance in life but, largely, because of it. Since I do things that motivate me and keep training fun while keeping balanced with holding down a meaningful job, I'm able to stay consistent over the years,” he believes. “Most athletes struggle with burnout and injury problems over time, but I believe a big part of my success lately has been that I do things that bring me joy and train in a variety of ways. I wake up every day excited for whatever training I'm going to do, and that helps me get the most out of myself in the long run.”

To make up for not living oversees where intense World Cup skimo racers train, the Crested-Butte-based athlete has decided to spend the entire winter training and racing in Europe. There, he plans to focus on sprint and relay, since only those more intense disciplines of skimo — and not his stronger event, vertical — will be Olympic events in Italy.

“I do okay in sprints, especially relative to other Americans … but I’m small — 5’9”, 130 pounds, so a powerful, short event doesn’t maximize my strengths, which are more grinds, where endurance and fitness plays more of a role than pure strength,” he explains.

So, he’s practicing more explosive interval training.

“What stands out to me most about Cam is sheer dedication to the sport and improving himself in any way he can,” shares training partner and friend Logan Greydanus. “Cam doesn’t come from a mountain sports background growing up in the Midwest, so he doesn't have many of the advantages that starting a sport really young brings. Instead, he really puts in the time to be the best of the best. This can take the form of waking up super early to get a workout in before work or really drilling down on identifying weaknesses and focusing on improving them.”

As if excelling in one sport isn’t enough, Smith recently qualified for team USA for the Mountain and Trail Running World Championships, which will be held in Thailand in early November. Though Smith found some success in competitive running in middle and high school, he ultimately stopped revolving his life around the sport because, “I was good, not great at it,” and small injuries began to add up.

“I was devastated when I couldn’t run because of stress fractures toward the end of high school. It was too much stress,” he says. “It was unhealthy how invested I was in the sport.”

Through those experiences, he learned to view life in a less competitive light and take the pressure off of himself.

“I realize now that the result isn’t everything,” he adds. “There’s so much more to life, and if a race doesn’t go well, I can still take satisfaction in the journey I took to get there, because it’s motivating me, and it has taken me to beautiful places.”

Since college, he has enjoyed the social, fun and adventurous aspects of sports, so much so that when he visited his older sister at Western Colorado University, and she took him skiing and climbing, he fell in love with the lifestyle — which was ironic, because he swore he wouldn’t enroll in the same university his sister attended and the same one his parents met at as college kids. But, mountains can be persuasive; he not only earned a degree from the school, but also coached skimo there for the past four years.

Though being in Europe will prevent him from coaching there this winter, he still plans to work summers at Adaptive Sports Center, because he “fell in love with meeting interesting people with great stories and perspectives,” he explains. “Seeing their lives change right in front of your eyes — there’s nothing more important I can do than being with that person in that moment.”

While Smith is proud of making the USA Skimo team, being the first North American man to make the podium in World Cup skimo, placing first in the 2018 Grand Traverse ski, run, dual sport and triple crown, and being the 2019 Sprint national champion, there’s much more to him than stats.

“Cam embodies the phrase ‘hometown hero’ more than anyone else I know, even though he wasn't born in CB,” Greydanus says. “He spends a lot of his time giving back to the community through things like raising money for our local cancer support group, Living Journeys, coaching at the local Nordic center or working at the Adaptive Sports Center helping disabled folks get outside and enjoy the outdoors. With all this community engagement, it's pretty hard to walk down the street with Cam and not have someone shout a hello or ask where he'll be running or skiing the next morning. It's cool to see how the community really rallies behind him and celebrates his successes when it comes time to race.”

Maybe that’s because he takes such an authentic approach to sports, encouraging people to “do things that are fun and motivating.”

“I hope that people can understand that you don’t have to sell out in any way and that sport is complementary to your lifestyle; it can’t be your entire identity and motivation to be alive,” he says, adding, “I just enjoy the process of trying to be my best.”

Originally published in the Fall 2022 issue of Spoke+Blossom.

True Competitive Spirit: Cameron Smith Succeeds By Training In Ways That Feel Right To Him, Not A Coach