A cold, clear trip hut trip high above the Pemberton Valley, BC. As wildfires become more and more common, so does skiing through burns, especially in western Canada. Photo: Tal Roberts “AGE IS A QUESTION of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”—Baseball great Satchel Paige Saugstad picked up a new outerwear sponsor, Orage, and ski sponsor, Blizzard Skis, in 2015, and attracted interest from the bigger film companies around that time as well. The last five years have been perhaps her best years on skis. But it’s not lost that she was already in her mid-30s by then, an age when sports careers commonly twilight (if not well before). But, if you’re improving, who really cares? Fellow pro skier Nick McNutt says Saugstad is “skiing better every year; and with the mentality and confidence she carries from her experience, it’s a truly deadly combo.” In 2014, she was named one of ESPN’s top 50 Women in Action Sports, and in 2018 won her second Best Female Per-formance from Powder Magazine for her segment in Matchstick Productions’ All In , and was also named Freeskiing Magazine ’s Best Female Skier that year. She has been nominated for Best Female Performance by Powder every year from 2014-2018. Jackie Paaso, who has spent a decade on the FWT, credits Saugstad with leading by example. “I’m 37 now and remember hearing when I first went through my 30s, from another female athlete, that once you’re at that age it all goes away. That was seven years ago, and instead of listening, I’ve watched Elyse and seen what she’s done,” Paaso says. Still, Saugstad knows it can’t last forever. “There’s a frea-kin’ shelf life to skiing for sure; it’s a sport,” she said, a few weeks shy of her 41 st birthday. “But in this moment where I can still feel like I’m one of the top female skiers, I want to continue what I’m doing by making a bigger snowball of my persona in our skiing industry.” WHEN IT COMES to bridging the gender-equality gap, which is a big tenet of Saugstad’s mission, she sees progress, but it’s hard to quantify. She is thrilled to report that recently she has bumped up to equal pay with some of her sponsors. Yet it took her almost 15 years to see this through and she knows it’s still brutal out there. “I have great sponsors, but there are still plenty of ski brands out there that treat women very poorly,” Saugstad says. “[In skiing] women are vastly un-derpaid, it’s not even 80 cents to the dollar. I bet if you found out real numbers, it’s more like 30 to 50 cents to the dollar.” She digs into the problem the best way she knows how. “My approach has always been trying to do it from the inside out instead of using social media as my platform to complain and cry for help,” Saugstad says. “I’m aiming to change the industry by gaining my peers’ and the industry’s respect, and that helps create space for women.” Elyse Saugstad 059
The Ski Journal Volume 13, Issue 3: Page 59
