Eli Brown – The Ski Caddy

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On race mornings, when the athletes are still quiet, and the stadium hasn’t yet decided what kind of day it wants to be, Eli Brown is already working through choices that won’t appear anywhere in the results sheet.

Brown is a technician for the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team, a job title that undersells the reality of what he does. He manages ski fleets that can swell to dozens of pairs for each athlete, interprets snow that changes by the hour, balances structure, flex, base material, and wax, and does it all while standing between an athlete’s confidence and the unforgiving arithmetic of international racing. He describes the role with a metaphor that is so perfect and precise.

“It’s kind of like being a golf caddy,” Brown said. “You’re advising. You’re coaching. You’re listening. There’s some sports psychology in there. And at the end of the day, it’s teamwork.”

The difference, of course, is speed. Brown’s athletes are making decisions at speeds that at times surpass fifty kilometers an hour, on snow that doesn’t care how good yesterday felt. His job is to make sure they don’t have to think about their skis at all.

This week, as the U.S. team arrives in Val di Fiemme for the 2026 Olympic Games, Brown is heading into his third Olympics as a full-time national team technician. He works primarily with Julia Kern and Ben Ogden, two athletes who could hardly be more different in how they move through the sport — or through their skis.

What ties them together is Brown’s ability to translate snow into something usable and pressure into something manageable.

Before the Truck

Brown didn’t arrive in the U.S. Ski Team wax truck by accident, or through a single decisive turn. He arrived there by staying in the sport long enough to see it from nearly every angle.

He grew up outside Minneapolis, where skiing was part of the landscape rather than a specialization. From there, he headed north to Northern Michigan University, spending time embedded in one of the country’s most storied distance programs. He raced, trained, and lived the rhythms of high-level skiing there, even if the academic endpoint never quite aligned. The years mattered anyway.

After Northern, Brown continued racing at a high level, lining up on the SuperTour with the Maine Winter Sports Center. Those seasons placed him squarely inside the domestic pipeline, moving between venues, teams, and support systems that most fans never see. It was an education in how competitive skiing actually functions in the United States — who does what, who makes decisions, and how outcomes are shaped long before race day.

Coaching followed. Brown took over as head coach at the University of Utah, a role that asked him to shift from personal performance to collective responsibility. Coaching meant planning seasons, managing personalities, and learning how to communicate under pressure — skills that would later prove just as valuable off the racecourse as on it. It was also in Utah that he completed his degree, closing a chapter that had remained open since his time at Northern.

His transition into technician work came gradually. After the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Brown began volunteering with the U.S. Ski Team as a tech, contributing where he could and learning how the national program operated from the inside. There was no formal on-ramp. He showed up, worked, and earned trust in the most durable way possible.

Later that year, he became a full-time member of the U.S. Ski Team staff. He has remained in that role since, now heading into his third Olympic Games as a technician.

That long, nonlinear path matters because it produced range. Brown understands athletes because he has been one. He understands coaches because he has been one. And he understands the demands of elite racing because he has lived alongside them for decades, in roles that rarely attract attention.

By the time he steps into the wax truck now, Brown isn’t just a specialist. He’s a translator — carrying experience forward from each stage of his career and applying it quietly, in service of athletes who don’t have time to wonder how their skis came to be ready.

The Job Is Not the Ski

Brown came up in an era when elite racers still did most of their own ski work. He’s part of what he calls “the last generation of full-time racers who maintained their own equipment,” a background that shapes how he approaches the modern technician’s role.

Today, that role is far more layered than waxing alone. A tech has to understand how structure reduces suction in wet snow, how flex interacts with kick wax in classic skiing and changes contact on skate skiing, how base materials respond to temperature and moisture, and how all of that feels under an athlete who has preferences, moves differently, and skis faster than the tech ever will.

“It’s complicated,” Brown said, describing how structure, grinds, and brands interact. “How it interacts with different brands and different grinds. Now we have to make sure that it interacts with our new grinds as we develop them, especially for race days in the games coming up.”

The complexity has only increased in recent years. Product cycles are shorter. Wax formulations change constantly. “If you ask me what waxes we use,” Brown said, “it’s a combination of letters and numbers. From Swix or whoever. It’s always changing.”

That instability has pushed the job away from recipes and toward judgment. Brown doesn’t describe himself as a scientist. He calls himself an artist.

“I rely heavily on feel,” he said, contrasting his approach with colleagues who lean more on data. “There’s subjective testing, and that’s still really important.”

The goal is simple, even if the path there isn’t: remove friction, remove doubt, and give the athlete skis they can trust without thinking.

One Pair of Skis, Two Skiers

Brown’s ability to individualize that trust is most obvious in the contrast between the two athletes he supports.

“They’re such different athletes,” he said of Kern and Ogden. “And the way they ski, I think, is also different in the way that their ski brands are also different. So it’s hard to say there’s much crossover or similarity there.”

Kern (Atomic) and Ogden (Madshus) race on different brands, which means separate quivers, separate development conversations, and separate ways of defining what “good” feels like. Over time, those preferences shape the skis themselves.

“The quiver of skis develops kind of along with what the athlete wants,” Brown said. “Whether by effort or by chance.”

For Brown, that means his own body becomes a tool — a reference point for athletes whose sensations he can’t fully replicate. In classic skiing, especially, the feedback loop is intimate and physical.

“With Julia,” Brown said, “if I can feel the wax, then it’s good. And with Ben, I need to jump on those things and make them work. I need a hammer almost to keep up with him when he’s skiing easy.”

Kern wants skis that give her clear feedback. Ogden wants skis that disappear under him.

“She calls it the Eli Factor,” Brown said. “I ski in her skis a lot, and it’s like, yeah, she’ll like it if it feels a touch slow. And I question if it’s fast enough, then it’s perfect for her.”

That calibration — knowing when “slow” is actually right — is the kind of knowledge that doesn’t show up in spreadsheets. It lives in repetition, in trust, and in the willingness to be wrong and adjust.

Inside Yolanda

The work happens inside a semi-truck the team calls Yolanda, a mobile workshop and nerve center that houses eight technicians during World Cup weekends and championships.

“When you walk into Yolanda,” Brown said, “on the left, there’s Jason. He’s like the door security.”

Jason Cork oversees Jesse Diggins’ skis and manages data. Across from him sits Chris Heckler, the team’s glide specialist, responsible for Gus Schumacher’s skis and for pushing development at the cutting edge. In the back corner is Oleg Ragilo, “a quiet boss from Estonia,” the head of kick wax and the truck’s mechanic. Tim Baucom, recently returned from retirement, handles hand structure. Bernie Nelson works with Jack Young and specializes in high-speed testing and emotional steadiness. Bjorn Heimdal and Per Erik Bjørnstad, both from northern Norway, bring decades of experience across glide and kick.

“And then at table three,” Brown said, “it’s Bernie and me.”

Everyone can wear any hat if needed, but the structure matters. Decisions are made by conversation, testing, and sometimes by vote. Kick wax choices are made by committee — “two out of three or three out of three votes advance skis” — a system designed to protect athletes from any single person’s blind spot.

There’s humor inside the pressure. The team maintains a set of traveling trophies, passed around to mark gratitude, effort, or apology. It’s a way of acknowledging that success and failure are shared.

“You’re on a roller coaster together,” Brown said. “The emotional roller coaster part.”

Relearning Speed

The current era of ski preparation is defined by change. Products come and go. Environmental and health concerns have reshaped what’s allowed. Even trusted solutions can’t be trusted for long.

“We’re on the cutting edge,” Brown said, “and it’s constantly changing.”

That volatility has made high-speed testing more important than ever, especially in skate races where structure and glide decisions can hinge on how skis behave at race pace on the actual course. Hand structure tools, brand-specific grinds, and new base materials all interact in ways that don’t fully reveal themselves on paper.

Brown sees his role as filtering that uncertainty before it reaches the athlete.

“I don’t want them thinking about it,” he said. “I want them to just ski.”

The Olympics compress all of that work. The venue in Val di Fiemme is familiar, but transformed by Olympic infrastructure. Warm weather looms as a wildcard. The margin for error narrows.

Looking back on the Tour de Ski, Brown is candid about what he’d change. “I wish I’d given Julia slightly more kick,” he said. “Ben slightly less kick.”

That kind of reflection isn’t self-flagellation. It’s the process.

The Emotional Work

If the technical demands are invisible, the emotional ones are even more so. A tech absorbs disappointment, so an athlete doesn’t have to. He steadies confidence when results wobble. He celebrates quietly when things click.

Brown talks about success in broader terms than medals.

“Gold is the goal,” he said. “But it’s also maintaining team relationships and health through an intense period.”

That perspective extends beyond race results to the ecosystem around the sport. Brown worries about industry instability, about layoffs and shrinking budgets, about whether the work he and others do will continue to be supported.

“We’re all one big community trying to do something special,” he said. “It’s my little cog in the machine.”

Inside Yolanda, that belief takes practical form. Shared meals. Shared jokes. Shared responsibility when something goes wrong. The trophies circulate. The work continues.

What Happens When It Works

When it works, there’s no single moment that announces it. No flag. No statistic. Just an athlete skiing freely, unencumbered by doubt.

Brown watches from the side of the course or from inside the truck, reading body language, listening for feedback, and filing away information for the next decision. The skis disappear. The job is done.

That’s the paradox of being a golf caddy or maybe more accurately a ski caddy: success means becoming invisible.

For Eli Brown, that invisibility is the point.

 

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