Kikkan Randall

Kikkan Randall, born on December 31, 1982, is an American Olympic champion cross-country skier from Anchorage, Alaska, who took up the sport in 1998 when her track coach suggested it as a way of keeping fit during the winter. She was the first American woman to win a World Cup race and a World Cup discipline title, and she topped the sprint standings three times. She won the silver medal in the individual sprint at the 2009 world championships in Liberec, the first world championship medal in cross-country skiing for an American woman, and in 2013 she and Jessie Diggins won the first American world championship gold medal in the team sprint. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang the same pair won the women's team sprint, the first Olympic cross-country skiing gold medal for the United States. She was inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.