Durango athletes like Christopher Blevins, Riley Amos and Asa Vermette have had recent success on the World Cup mountain bike circuit. Durango’s Charlie Mickel has had a strong start to a different World Cup career.
Mickel finished his first full mogul skiing World Cup season in March and ended the year with some good momentum, picking up a podium in the penultimate World Cup round in Livigno, Italy, on March 12.
“I feel pretty good as I built momentum pretty consistently throughout the year,” Mickel said. “I started the season off with a 12th place, but then missed three finals in a row after that. Then I started to pick up momentum again with a sixth in duels. I started to jump around the top 10 pretty consistently.”
The 20-year-old Durangoan didn’t have a lot of confidence in himself early in his first full season. He felt the pressure and was nervous. But Mickel realized he had to put his nerves aside to establish himself on the World Cup moguls scene. He tried to ski consistently with higher-percentage runs to build confidence.
His approach paid off as he was promoted to the U.S. Ski Team’s A-Team. This means Mickel will be guaranteed to make World Cup starts next season and his season will be fully funded.
Everything Mickel does with the U.S. Ski Team, whether it’s coaching, training or lodging, is paid for. He also has sponsorships that give him some base pay as well as World Cup bonuses for podiums and top 10s.
Mickel’s come a long way from his days learning how to ski at Purgatory Resort and Chapman Hill when he was 6. He got into mogul skiing because his dad, Alex, coached the mogul team. Mickel moved his way up the sport from Southwest Tour competitions. He beat everyone locally and moved up to state and national competitions.
Ever since he was a kid, Mickel knew he wanted to win the Olympics. It first really became a reality when he made the national team at 17. Then his recent progression and success only helped his belief in himself that he can compete at the top of the world stage.
“If you told me I was going to get a World Cup podium last fall, I would have said, ‘Holy s---, that's incredible,”’ Mickel said. “If I get that, I'm happy. But now, I want to get multiple World Cup podiums next year. It doesn't always happen for people. Some people are one and done, but I really hope that's not me. I would like to see myself at the top of the sport.”
Mogul skiers can have very short careers because it’s a high-impact sport so it’s easy to do something like tear an ACL or have chronic pain that ends a career. Mickel is doing what he can to ensure he can compete at the highest level for at least a decade.
Mickel has workouts six days a week, with weight training three times a week and conditioning five days a week. His conditioning workouts can vary from steady cardio to lactate threshold training. Mickel has had problems with his back from the compression that mogul skiing brings and he does exercises for that.
On the strength side of his training, Mickel does different resistance band exercises to warm up before doing different types of squats, lunges, curls and power cleans depending on the day.
Mickel doesn’t forget about his diet either; he tracks his macros and takes supplements.
“Having the resources that I do with the team, I'm able to have a really well-rounded schedule between strength, conditioning and mobility,” Mickel said. “Having things like Normatec and a physical therapist on the road, it helps a lot.”
The 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in Milan and the mogul competitions will be held at Livigno, where Mickel got his podium last season.
There are a lot of variables that go into a mogul course. Mickel and other World Cup competitors traveled around the world to places like Switzerland, China, Canada, Sweden and Kazakhstan. All the courses are different with steeper or flatter pitches, different lengths for different sections and different weather conditions.
Mickel remembers how it rained before the World Cups in Finland and Sweden, making the course super icy. The style of the moguls is also different, with some having softer or harder bumps.
The course in Livigno didn’t even suit Mickel’s style very well; he was just on his game that day. Mickel prefers a steeper, consistent pitch with medium deep, soft moguls, big jumps and steep landings.
Scoring is also a huge part of skiing moguls. Sixty percent of a skier’s points come from how well a skier turns through the moguls. This includes how well a skier carves through the moguls and their upper body placement. Then 20% of the scoring comes from the jump section of the course and 20% from how fast a skier gets down the course.
Five judges score each part of the run. The top-scoring judge and the lowest-scoring judge’s scores get cut, leaving the middle three to form the scoring average.
Mickel said he needs to improve the most on his time and his turns. He does well with his tricks on the jumps and gets good jump scores. One of the main reasons he’s working so hard on strength and conditioning is to be faster and have cleaner turns.
He also recognizes that the better he does, the more name recognition he’ll get with the judges; Mickel thinks that’ll help with qualification scores.
The U.S. mogul teams will send four male mogul skiers to the Winter Olympics. Mickel not only wants to make the Olympic team, but also to take home a medal. He wants to increase his social media presence on Instagram with good performances. Nothing would do that quite like an Olympic medal.
“That's what I want,” Mickel said about an Olympic medal. “But I'm not saying I'm going to get it and if I don't get it, I'm okay with that as well.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
