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On March 9, Senior Farli Boden spent her weekend competing in the US Telemark Nationals at Crotched Mountain in New Hampshire. All telemark racers throughout the US came together and competed to determine who would claim the title of National Champion. By the end of the weekend, Boden was known as the Women’s National Champion.

Boden began telemark skiing at the age of six. Being first introduced to alpine skiing when she could walk, transitioning to telemark was not a large challenge, other than getting used to lifting the heel and balancing.

Telemark skiing is a combination of nordic and alpine skiing, focussing on large carving turns with specific bindings, designed to fix the toe of the ski boot to the ski, leaving a free heel

Boden first participated in telemark racing at age ten competing at the Junior Nationals Competition. Telemark Nationals consist of a citizens division and a separate racers division, allowing anyone to compete in the citizen division races. Boden originally attended Junior Nationals as a fun thing to try out, and later began to race competitively.

At 13, Boden joined the US Development Telemark Team, and then later became a member of the US National Telemark Team at sixteen years old. The team is compiled of telemark skiers throughout the nation, Boden currently is the only racer from Idaho.

Since 2010, she competed at the Telemark Nationals event a total of five times, coming in second place the last two years. Boden had great success at the 2018 National Championship, being ranked the Women’s National Champion.

Boden was able to succeed so quickly in telemark racing due to her participation in the Schweitzer Alpine Racing School team. Alpine racing was much easier to focus on for Boden because the team and coaches are located at Schweitzer. However, Boden finds telemark racing intriguing due to the variety of the sport.

“Telemarking is so fun with all the jumps and the skating, that’s really interesting to me,” Boden said. “I really can’t compare alpine racing to telemark racing.”

Over this ski season, Boden only trained gates on telemark skis once, and skied telemark four times throughout the course of the season, since she had limited time while constantly training alpine.

Telemark racing events consist of three individual races, a dual, a classic and a sprint classic. All three races involve a section of gates, a jump with a line for distance, a skating portion and a 360 degree banked turn. Due to limited snow, the Nationals event only consisted of two sprint classics and one dual, three races total.

“Honestly, telemark and alpine racing translate so well because its just ski racing, in both you go around the gates and try to see who’s the fastest,” Boden said.

Boden was awarded first place in all three races. As the weekend came to a close, Boden left Crotched Mountain as the best female telemark racer in the United States.

As the ski season comes to a close, Boden has yet to decide what will come next for telemark racing. To compete at the next level, attending the Junior World Cup next year in Europe, would allow Boden to race against a better age range.

“To be top 5 at the junior world cup would be really cool, that’s my next goal,” Boden stated.