Cross-Country Love (Love On the Podium #5)

Prologue

But she didn’t know the weight of an Olympic gold medal around her neck. The heft of one in her palm. She didn’t know how fast it might warm against her skin. Or how different a gold medal might feel versus silver and bronze.

She thought it would feel very different.

Gold.

It was Mara’s sole focus. It was all that mattered.

“Mara May, have you had trouble acclimating to the altitude here in China?” a reporter from ESPN asked her.

“No. I’m fine.”

It was the pre-Olympics press day, but she could hardly focus on the reporters in front of her.

She was running the Beijing courses in her head.

Thinking through strategies, reviewing the strengths of her competitors.

Testing herself, even as she went through the motions of making nice with the media.

She was usually terrified of press conferences. She hated public speaking. Hated having eyes on her, especially without the safety of her skis. But she was too preoccupied to be nervous.

She should have been focusing on her words and not the hamster wheel in her brain. She had a reputation to uphold. A persona. To overcome her shyness, she put on a facade for the press, and even, to an extent, for her teammates.

Nicey-nice. The good girl. Polite.

But today, her heart wasn’t in it. Her mind kept straying back to gold.

She wanted it. She was going to get it.

“This is a young team. How is the dynamic between the handful of veterans and all the rookies?” another reporter asked. The question was directed at her, but since he hadn’t said her name, she pretended it wasn’t. Eventually, someone else chimed in. Mara didn’t listen to their answer.

Reporters asked questions about the wind in Zhangjiakou. The artificial snow. Covid regulations and precautions.

She let others respond. Or she gave the blandest, shortest responses.

She glanced at her teammates. The closest to her was Kirby Bonham.

KB, as everyone called her, but Mara had never felt cool enough to use the nickname.

Nicknames indicated a degree of familiarity that Mara wasn’t comfortable with.

Regardless, Kirby could answer. She loved to talk.

“Mara May?” said a reporter from the back row.

“Yes, sir?”

She didn’t recognize the reporter’s name once he gave it. None of this mattered. She smiled at him.

Gold.

She should have been resting. Or training.

“Why have you decided not to race in the relay here in Beijing?”

“I’m racing on an injury, so we’re limiting impact where it makes sense to do so.” She’d answered that question already, so it was annoying to answer it again.

Her hip flexor was feeling a tad weak after the Tour de Ski, so the physio had suggested dropping the less important events for the Olympics.

Not that she would ever call the relay a less important event.

But they were an inexperienced team, and a medal was incredibly unlikely in the relay.

Having extra rest in the middle of the Games was what was best for her.

The relay team was not going to make the podium—with or without her—and giving up her spot provided another athlete extra experience with an Olympic start.

“The princess of cross-country skiing needs to win her gold medal,” Kirby said, a slyness in her voice that made Mara bristle inside. She hated that moniker, but it had unfortunately stuck. The press used it. Her teammates used it, normally behind her back and without much kindness.

“In the thirty-k mass start?” the reporter asked. He squinted down at a card in his hand as if he were fact-checking his own question. And he probably was. Some of the reporters only cared about winter sports once the Olympics came around.

“I’m racing in the thirty kilometer, yes,” Mara said. She felt too superstitious to admit that that was the race. That the race was hers. The gold was hers.

But it was.

Finally.

It was her third Olympics. She wasn’t going to lose.

She’d won gold at the World Championships. She was the top distance skier in the world. These Olympics were her coronation, and her future was golden.

Kirby was the only other American cross-country ski racer who would match the number of kilometers Mara would put on her skis at the Olympics.

For most of her career, Kirby’s focus had been sprints, but in the past two years, she had started making a play for the distance races.

She’d even, surprisingly, snagged the fourth start spot on the team for the thirty kilometer.

It would be good experience for Kirby to race the thirty-k. Not that Mara cared about Kirby’s development as a skier.

Gold was her one and only concern.

Her only desire.

She was going to bring that gold home to Alaska.

“How does it feel racing the relay without your objectively best skier?” that same reporter asked Kirby.

Kirby lit up like the question excited her. “Mara might be our ‘best skier.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “But she’s not our fastest.”

Mara didn’t react. Because that was false. And because she’d trained her whole adult life, and most of her teenage life too, to lock down, tune out, and turn on the speed. The queen of compartmentalization. Or perhaps, the princess.

If she could separate herself from the intensity and pressure surrounding elite cross-country skiing, she could do the same during an irrelevant press conference.

Gold. That was all that mattered. Kirby Bonham’s outrageousness did not.

“Is that so?” the reporter said.

“Fuck, yeah,” Kirby said. “Mara’s not our fastest skier. I am.”

Mara laughed. It was a small one, but it left her before she’d realized it.

All the eyes in the room landed on her, and heat rushed to her cheeks.

Kirby glanced at her and smiled. Something about that smile threw Mara’s stomach for a loop. It pissed her off. And made her feel funny. Suddenly, Mara was very aware of the triphammer of her heart. Of the blood whooshing in her ears.

Kirby’s smile wasn’t kind. It was nasty.

And Mara wanted to see it again.

“Mara May, what’s it like being rivals with your teammate?

” another reporter asked. Mara recognized the reporter from the Olympics in Pyeongchang.

“Is it hard to switch between being so close to your teammates, traveling together during the World Cup season, to the competitive nature of the Olympics?”

Mara wasn’t close with the other skiers on the US Cross-Country Ski Team. She kept to herself, a true introvert, even as they all spent every season together and some off-seasons training in the same locations. So no. It wasn’t hard.

“I don’t see them as rivals,” she said. “I don’t see Kirby Bonham as a rival. I’m usually so far ahead of her, I don’t see her at all.”