Jaelin Kauf is a tail-end millennial, and she embodies many of that generation’s traits.
She’s a glutton for travel and prefers experience to materialism. She’s tech-savvy and focused on wellness.
You might find her dancing Zumba with roommates, or binge-watching comedy series, including her all-time favorite, “Seinfeld," which she says she’s seen seven times through.
Yet conventional millennial she is not.
Kauf is one of the world’s most decorated freestyle skiers and currently the “all eyes on … athlete to beat” in the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy.
Italy is a long way from her hometown of Alta, Wyoming. Although her success is in large part the result of her upbringing in this small ski hamlet nestled in the Teton Range.
Unincorporated at the western edge Teton County, Wyoming, with primary access and services provided by Teton County, Idaho, the community of Alta stands apart like a small republic of its own, guided by a distinct set of outdoor values.
At the local elementary school, for instance, Kauf and other students enjoyed all-school ski-days each Monday in winter, gaining exposure to world-class terrain from an early age.
“I was basically just ripping around with my friends up at the mountain in the afternoons in the winter, which I think is a pretty amazing program and opportunity to have as a kid,” she said, speaking with Cowboy State Daily across a nine-hour-time difference from Ruka, Finland, where she’s set to compete this weekend in the World Cup Finals of Skiing.
Also aiding her success, both of Kauf’s parents are themselves professional skiers, and they ingrained a love for the sport. To hear her tell it, she may have spent as much time on the slopes as the classroom.
“I got to skip school on big powder days to go skiing with my mom or dad,” she said. “I definitely hit the jackpot with my parents.”
From the skills she gained carving up Grand Targhee Resort with her parents, to the humbling lessons of a troubled professional debut, Kauf feels as though everything up to now has been a prelude and preparation for her greatest ambition yet — winning Gold at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Here’s a look at how she got here, and how she plans to live up to her growing hype.
Goodbye To Skiing, So She Thought
With ideas of following her parents’ professional line, Kauf moved as a teenager to attend high school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where aspiring student athletes were accommodated.
Yet that experience left her disinclined to pursue a life of professional skiing.
She committed herself to a single year of full-time ski competition after high school, which she envisioned as a last hurrah before starting in a new direction studying architecture at Montana State University.
“My plan after high school was to solely focus on skiing for one year before going to college. I wanted to give it everything with dreams of a super successful year, and then to walk away on top, on my own terms, and go to college and kind of say goodbye to skiing,” she said.
The problem was she didn’t stomp the landing of her figurative final run. Rather, she washed out in what felt like a year-long yard sale, with her emotions and sense of self scattered along with her ski poles downslope.
“I didn't have a successful year. It went horribly,” she said, an assessment vouched for by her former ski coach. “One of my old coaches on the ski team loved to tell that story for a while of just watching me crash and cry at those events.”
Paradoxically, the failure of that year revealed an even deeper passion for the sport, resulting in a course correction as her competitive nature refused to go out on a low note.
“Having a really rough season made me see I cared a lot more about the sport than I initially thought. It’s what made me realize how much more I wanted out of the sport, and how much more I had to give.”
College would have to wait. Comeback took priority, which meant training harder than she ever had.
“Up until that point, I'd pretty solely relied on my natural athletic ability. But I started going to the gym and working really hard and putting a lot more into my training,” she said.
That decision is reflective of her intrinsically competitive nature, according to Isabella Beard, Kauf’s childhood best friend, who recalls her ambitions for success manifesting early.
“During our Presidential Fitness Tests, Jaelin and another kid had this ongoing competition over who could do the most chin ups. It was always back and forth. She had the competitive spirit but she was always kind too,” Beard said, adding that of course it was Kauf who won the annual winter ski race in her elementary class. “Jaelin won that pretty much every year”
Kauf brought that competitive spirit to her training after a rough post high school season, and it paid off.
At 18, she won first place in an International Ski Federation competition, qualifying her for the World Cup in Valmalenco, Italy. From there she won a spot on the U.S. Ski Team.
Soon she’d find herself the favorite heading into the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. But similar to the letdown she experienced after high school, Kauf again failed to meet her moment.
Albeit the loss in PyeongChang taught her a critical lesson that set the stage for another big comeback.
Let Down In PyeongChang
She entered the 2018 Games as a favorite with "the number one bib,” but she finished 7th in women’s freestyle and went home without a medal. In hindsight, she’s concluded her mindset that hindered her.
“I thought [Pyeongchang] might be my only Olympic shot, and I didn't know how to handle the pressure. I had no idea what that Olympic stage and pressure was like. I was still at the point in my career figuring out how to put down runs and have consistency,” she said. “I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I felt like there were all these expectations and that a lot of other people would be so disappointed if I didn't win a medal.”
Kauf reasoned if she convinced herself the Olympic races were no different than any other competitive run, she could put the pressure aside. The tactic mitigated her nerves, but it also created complacency.
“I thought the best way to deal with the pressure was to pretend that it was just another event, like the World Cup, and then I thought I could ski easily into the final round. It was definitely a kind of coping mechanism. But what happened is I didn't feel like I left it all out there on every run,” she said.
Journaling Back To Success
As with her post high school year, the loss incited her fighting spirit.
But this time she sought help from one of her heroes, three-time moguls Olympian Shannon Bahrke.
Bahrke advised Kauf to take up a practice of positivity journaling.
“Bahrke knew what it was like going to multiple Olympics and had success herself. Something I took from her was that she told me to write down everything positive and focus only on the good,” Kauf said.
“So I started a ski journal that I write in every day. Before comps, after comps, during training. I write down only positive things. What went well or maybe writing a pep talk before the day started and always being as positive as I can. It’s helped me a lot to grow confidence in myself.”
Pressure Is Privilege
It’s a tactic that helped her reimagine the relationship with high stakes pressure. Where before she construed the feeling as an indication that something might go wrong, she now appreciates the sensation of pressure as a type of privilege and opportunity.
“I've learned how to deal with it and look at it through a different lens. Being able to stand on the Olympic stage, compete on that level and know that kind of pressure – the pressure of being number one in the world at the Olympics – that's an insane privilege to have. It’s something very few people in the world will ever have. So being able to see it and in a different way as something positive has really helped,” she said.
With this perspective, she made it to the podium in 2022 at the Olympic Games in Beijing, earning a silver medal. In the following year pulled off a “hat trick” win to capture all three major FIS Freestyle World Cup titles in moguls during a single season.
And as she gears up for the 2026 Games in Milano Cortina, the privilege of pressure has never been greater.
“My whole mindset is that every single run — qualifications, first round of finals, second round of finals – I want to leave it all out there every single time, because I don’t want that same feeling that I had in 2018 of looking back and knowing I had more to give, because that's the worst feeling in the world,” she said.
“I know nothing is guaranteed and given to you. You have to take it every time.”
Sharing the Love
In the process of reframing her mindset for Olympic competition, she found help in a mantra that has since grown into something more.
As a way of reminding herself of what matters most, which is her pure love and enjoyment for the sport, she started repeating the phrase, “Deliver the Love.”
Soon it was a sticker on her helmet and gear. Then it became the name of an organization, which as of last week launched its official online presence with the aim of being a resource for female athletes.
It’s something that Beard, her childhood friend, sees as the inevitable outcome for a person like Kauf.
“For a lot of people, myself included, we really look up to Jaelin for dreaming big and then working to actually reach those dreams,” Beard said.
The motive to give back reflects the milieu of her hometown in Alta, which rallied to support her during the critical early phases of her professional development, holding fundraisers on her behalf at a time when the financial needs of full-time competition would otherwise be cost prohibitive.
“It's said often, but it really takes a village. It takes an immense amount of love and support and community to be able to afford these dreams, to be able to keep chasing them. Hopefully, I can be a part of that story for others.”
She’s been on the professional circuit for ten years, and whatever happens in Italy, she’ll continue to ski as long as she can. And of all the far-flung mountains she’s ridden, there’s no debating her favorite.
“I might be a little biased toward my hometown and home mountain, but Targhee is still my favorite place to ski. Nowhere beats Targhee on a powder day. That’s for sure.”
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.
