Vermont skier Ben Ogden began the year winning 2 Olympic medals. Then came the twist.

Vermonter Ben Ogden can pinpoint the moment when, scoring two silver medals at this year’s Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, he became the most decorated American man in cross-country ski history.

“Oh, my God,” he recently recalled thinking, “did that really just happen?”

The 26-year-old had a similar reaction when, slushing along a melting local slope this spring, things quickly went downhill.

“I was just having some fun when I came to a dirt patch, had to do a quick stop and tweaked my knee.”

Thinking he had pulled a muscle, Ogden checked with a physical therapist. Then came an MRI, discovery of a major tear in his shock-absorbing meniscus cartilage and a doctor’s recommendation for surgery that would put him on crutches for weeks and in physical rehab for months.

Ogden asked for a few days. It wasn’t to seek a second opinion.

“I had to take the snow tires off my car — stuff like that,” said the favorite son of the tiny southwestern town of Landgrove, population 177. “These things take a little planning.”

Many Olympic medalists return home to appearances on the “Today” show or a box of Wheaties. This is the story of how a fourth-generation Vermonter instead landed on a couch and, staying true to who he was before his wins, launched his own version of a comeback.

Ogden began by throwing out the traditional playbook. Take when he was told to hire a top-tier agent, like the one who urged him to ditch his small sponsors for big brands. The new medalist instead has opted for a part-time assistant and his local supporters — Brattleboro’s Vermont Plank Flooring and Richmond’s Bivo water bottles and UnTapped maple sports nutrition.

“They may not be able to offer me the most money, but I want to work with them because they invest in Vermont,” he said.

Ogden headlined NBC’s Olympic prime-time programming that drew more than 10 million nightly viewers, only to save his next broadcast interviews for VTDigger’s “Vermont Conversation with David Goodman,” Vermont Public’s “The Sports Rapport” and WCAX’s 70-year lunch-hour staple “Across the Fence.”

“The more you answer similar questions, the more they become rehearsed, but I hope that doesn’t mean I’ve become less authentic and less me,” he said.

As for public appearances, Ogden has spoken at the Landgrove Meeting House and his two alma maters: Flood Brook elementary school in nearby Londonderry and the University of Vermont in Burlington. His latter speech came at this year’s commencement. There, he recalled how he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2022, then began a master’s program before withdrawing to compete.

“There were so many professors I felt I left hanging,” he said after, “so getting to circle back and hear that they don’t hold it against me took a weight off my shoulders.”

Family and friends are bemused by Ogden’s steadfast response to his success.

“I don’t see any difference in him,” said his mother, Andrea, the town of Landgrove’s treasurer, assistant clerk, delinquent tax collector and trustee of public funds.

“He’s still the same Ben,” added Bill Koch, speaking as a friend, neighbor and, 50 years ago, the first American man to win a Nordic Olympic medal.

Ogden, for example, recently posted an Instagram photo that prodded voters to the polls with a “shoutout to whoever dialed in these cider doughnuts.”

“Skiing fast is terrific,” one commenter responded. “Leading by example — legendary.”

Ogden could have lost his head to the hype. As he prepared for the Olympics at the start of the year, the New York Times noted that the two-time NCAA Nordic champion and 2023’s fastest young male World Cup sprinter “just might be on the verge of taking American cross-country skiing where it hasn’t been before.”

But on Feb. 10, Ogden was happy to simply repeat history when, racing in the individual sprint, he scored the only U.S. men’s Nordic medal since Koch snagged the first at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

Ogden recalls his dry mouth screaming for water and his drained legs shaking as he finished a split second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo to nab silver. Soon the Vermonter felt the arms of teammates. Heard the throaty roar of the crowd. Saw the teary face of his mother who, like him, was thinking of his father, John, who died of cancer in 2023.

Ogden wrapped himself in an American flag as his friends, under the eye of a live television camera, were shown cheering at a watch party in Richmond. Receiving his medal, the skier then performed a celebratory backflip just like he did the first time he landed a top-three World Cup performance shortly after his father’s death.

“I told my 15-year-old self that if I won an Olympic medal, I’d do a backflip off the podium.”

Ogden won his second silver a week later on Feb. 18 when he and fellow U.S. racer Gus Schumacher finished 1.37 seconds behind Norway in the team relay sprint. 

“I thought it would be different or less intense,” he said of his follow-up victory. “But no, it’s just astonishing.”

Koch, tuning in 3,800 miles away, offered congratulations through a phone call.

“Your life,” the 71-year-old recalls saying, “will never be the same.”

Fast-forward to Ogden’s April outing at Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, home slope of fellow Olympic medalist Ryan Cochran-Siegle.

“Not exactly the spring update I had hoped,” Ogden went on to post alongside an Instagram photo of him sidelined on a couch. “Unfortunately, I had a slight mishap while corn snow harvesting.”

After surgery at UVM Medical Center in Burlington, Ogden couldn’t stand on his left leg for six weeks.

Enter his cellphone camera.

“I first and foremost want to apologize for how long of a break it’s been since my last video,” he told viewers on his YouTube channel. “But as some of you may have realized, things got pretty busy for me.”

Ogden went on to gripe about his shaky crutches before grabbing a blowtorch to weld aluminum piping into a sturdier pair — no surprise to those who’ve watched him take apart and tinker with a 1973 Land Rover he’s rebuilding in a family barn.

By June, Ogden was swimming at the UVM pool. By July, he was biking. By August, he was roller skiing.

“Now I’m able to train really hard and do 98% of what I would normally do,” he said this month at an event celebrating him and his colleagues on Stratton’s SMS T2 elite cross-country training team.

Ogden is preparing for a set of U.S. Ski Team physical tests later this year. When he passes, he’ll return to the World Cup racing circuit to cap his recovery.

“I’ll maybe have a bit of a slower start,” he said, “but hopefully by January or February, I’ll be just as good as new.”

Some people have told Ogden the timing of his surgery — just after the Olympics and well before coming competitions — was fortuitous.

“It’s never fun to be injured, but I’ve been forced to be thankful that it happened when it happened.”

Others have questioned how it will affect his future.

“Someone asked me, ‘Do you ever think that your best days of skiing are behind you?’ Of course. But what can I do but just keep trying my hardest? Every day is a new challenge. If one day or one week or one month or one year of training is bad, all I can do is try and make the next one better.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont skier Ben Ogden began the year winning 2 Olympic medals. Then came the twist..