Four years of determination and ski cross training have paid off for Nicholas Katrusiak, as he has been named to the Canadian National NextGen Group. Earlier this March, the Whistler Mountain Ski Club (WMSC) alum linked up with fellow NextGen athlete Emeline Bennett to win mixed team silver at the FIS Ski Cross Junior World Championships, and he is thrilled to be trending upward.
“I’m super honoured, obviously, to have been picked,” said Katrusiak. “It just feels like a lot of hard work coming together over the last couple of years, this year especially. I really, really kicked it up a notch. I saw the improvements in my results, and now I’m seeing the improvements in this team.
“It’s definitely not the end goal, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Katrusiak has already hit some bumps in the road during his career. The 18-year-old suffered a concussion during his first European Cup race in 2022, which knocked him out of action for more than a month. Morale was low as he watched his teammates compete from the sidelines, but he powered through his physiotherapy sessions and felt good upon his return.
The Whistlerite missed out on the individual small final at this year’s Junior Worlds in Passo San Pellegrino, Italy, finishing ninth. He regrouped quickly though, helping Bennett defeat the French pair and giving eventual champion Switzerland a run for its money.
“Last year, I was skiing well, but I just wasn’t skiing well at the right time,” Katrusiak opined. “This year, I really think I just flipped a switch, and I started doing what I needed to do when I needed to do it. I just proved to myself that what I was doing was the right thing.”
Building skills
Much like Bennett and numerous other ski cross athletes, Katrusiak started out as an alpine racer. His first brush with his current sport came as a young preteen, where he and his friends would pass time on a small track at Blackcomb Mountain. He soon outgrew that particular track, but not the new interest ignited within him.
As a 13-year-old, Katrusiak participated in his first ski cross final at Big White Resort. By his own admission, he was “totally blown out of the water” and “absolutely destroyed,” but that didn’t stop him from having fun. In the process, he met some mentors who took him under his wing and showed him that ski cross was a real career possibility.
Katrusiak continued with alpine skiing for some time after that, but began dedicating himself to ski cross at 14 years of age. He cut his teeth on the Western Canada Ski Cross Series with races in Big White, Fernie and as far east as Edmonton. The youngster flashed potential, claiming the overall U16 title, and was hooked.
By the time COVID-19 restrictions relaxed enough for him to return to action, Katrusiak had progressed to the Nor-Am Cup level and joined the Alberta-based Evolve Ski Cross Club to further level up his skills. He committed fully to Evolve after graduating high school, but does not plan to give up alpine skiing anytime soon.
“Ski cross is a lot more similar to alpine than people think,” Katrusiak said. “Obviously, it’s still skiing and you’re still turning, so it’s all the same basic functional movements. I’m still learning a lot, but I feel like I got the basics down pretty quickly.
“What a lot of people don’t think about is when they switch to ski cross, they just completely stop training alpine, which is not the way I did it or wanted to do it. I still like training alpine, and I think it’s a really good thing to train because you still need to build those skills. If you don’t train them, you’re going to eventually lose those skills.”
Always learning
Katrusiak’s support system has his back. Ski cross was barely a blip on the winter sports radar during the ski-racing heyday of his mother, Diane, but he credits her and his father Richard for being open-minded. The three, plus his older brother Alex, essentially learned about ski cross together during Katrusiak’s formative years.
He also has nothing but good things to say about his WMSC coaches and the community that sport has brought into his life.
“Everybody’s very intense [in alpine],” he said. “Obviously I still have friends that come from alpine, but in ski cross, people are more laid back and everyone is super supportive—especially of new people because it is a smaller sport. They’re kind of like: ‘let me help you so that I can get you into the sport.’”
Despite being on the NextGen team, Katrusiak still has two more years as a junior athlete ahead of him. He plans to go to another Junior Worlds and hopes to be a consistent top-25-or-better presence on the European Cup circuit. Beyond that, it’s all about gaining experience.
“This [next] year isn’t really results-based for me,” Katrusiak explained. “It’s more just getting time on track with guys that are a lot better than me and learning from them. That’s the biggest goal for this year: to learn a lot.”
