Park City cross country skier Rosie Brennan has been battling an illness for over a year.
The illness has caused Brennan to miss several events, yet she qualified for her third Olympics anyways.
At the Milano Cortina Games, Brennan raced the 20km skiathlon classic free, 4×7.5km relay classic free and inaugural 50km mass start classic races, finishing in 37th, fifth and 15th place, respectively.
Brennan views her Olympics through a complex lens, seeing both the positives and negatives of her performance.
“It’s hard to evaluate the performance in and of itself,” Brennan said. “The context was just so wildly different this time around. Of course there’s a part of me that’s crushed that I couldn’t be at my best or what I know I’m capable of, but there was also a part of me that was incredibly proud of the fact that I had made it there.”
Brennan said highlights of the Games for her are skiing through pain and finishing every race she started.
Brennan has a vascular condition, which makes the skate competitions difficult because of the lower blood flow that reaches the legs due to the technique. She is only racing classic competitions now.
Brennan believes the intensity in the 50km race to be slightly lower than shorter distances, which helped her. She was also proud to be part of history in the first women’s Olympic 50km race. Men have raced that distance since the first Olympics in 1924.
“I had targeted that race well before I got sick,” Brennan said. “So, just to make it to the start line was a huge accomplishment for me. … Especially at this point in my career, it is about so much more than my individual results. I need to find purposes that are bigger than that, and uplifting women in sport is something I really stand for and wanted to be a part of. That was particularly motivating.”
Brennan said she knows her decade-plus of world-class training and competing experience didn’t disappear overnight. She was happy with how her body held up at the Games.
While the cross country skiers and teams are relatively isolated at the Olympics to avoid potential illnesses, Brennan was able to enjoy seeing family and friends and watching teammates Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher win silver medals in Val di Fiemme.
In addition to her illness and trying to stay healthy, Brennan also had to navigate the challenge of not knowing which races she’d start until days beforehand, commonplace in cross country skiing, with coaches wanting to wait until the last minute to see who’s in the best form for each race.
“The Olympics are not really enjoyable for people competing, and especially for cross country skiers,” Brennan said. “I raced the first and last day. … So, you have to be so locked-in focused the whole time, which is really challenging.”
Brennan took no time off after the Olympics, competing in the Falun, Sweden, World Cup Sunday, where she finished in 35th place in the 20km skiathlon classic free race.
Brennan is attempting to race in all four remaining World Cups this season, including the season-ending Lake Placid, New York, World Cup.
Brennan will take some time away from training at the end of the season in March to evaluate her future in the sport. She is 37 years old.
“There’s only so many weeks left in the season, so felt like I should give it a try,” Brennan said. “I just continue to want to have races where I feel more like myself. Every day is still a battle.”