Alli Macuga is coming off her best season yet.
The 21-year-old Park City, Utah, skier and member of the U.S. Ski Team finished the 2023-24 season ranked fifth in the world after two podium finishes.
On Thursday, Macuga will have a chance to improve her odds of competing at next year’s Winter Olympics at the Intermountain Health Freestyle International Ski World Cup held at Deer Valley Resort in Park City.
Macuga, who is used to traveling all over the world for her sport, is excited to compete in her hometown.
“We talk about it all season. We’re all just always so excited for Deer Valley because it’s home for us,” she said. “We call it the Super Bowl of mogul skiing, because we get the biggest crowd, and it’s always the most fun under the lights. I look forward to it every year.”
The Deseret News caught up with Macuga on Monday to discuss her skiing journey and what’s ahead for her as a rising star on the World Cup circuit in the final year before the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.
Macuga family skiers
Macuga feels like she’s known she wanted to be a professional skier since she was just 2 or 3 years old and first put on a pair of skis.
Her dream crystalized at age 7 when she started competing in all of the freestyle ski sports.
She followed in the footsteps of her older sisters Sam, a ski jumper, and Lauren, an alpine skier, and tried their preferred skiing disciplines before falling in love with moguls.
“When I competed in moguls, I always knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I always had so much fun doing it, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see myself doing this for a long time,’” she said.
Together, the Macuga sisters could become the next big sports family. All three sisters are on national ski teams and looking to punch their tickets to the Olympics.
On Thursday, Lauren Macuga became the first female American alpine skier not named Lindsey Vonn or Mikaela Shiffrin to win a world championship medal since 2013, per The Athletic.
“I want to go to the Olympics, and it’d be extra special if I could go with my sisters,” Alli Macuga said.
Their different sports take the sisters all across the world, and it’s rare for them to ever watch each other in person.
But the youngest Macuga sister tries to watch her siblings “online all the time,” whether she’s busy training or in a sauna in Norway.
“In November, I was at a sauna in Oslo in between competitions with my team, and Lauren was competing in an Alpine World Cup. So, I brought my phone in the sauna and pulled up the live scoring just so I could watch how she did, and I’m pretty sure she got fifth there,” she said. “It was exciting to watch that.”
Regardless of the physical distance separating them, the sisters are able to lean on each other for support, Alli Macuga said.
“It’s a really unique thing because, I mean, there’s a lot of sisters in the same sports. But for us to all be, especially three of us, to all be in different sports, I think it’s very unique,” she said. “Talking to them, I’m able to really express everything about what’s going on in my sports, and they do the same.”
The fact that the sisters compete in different sports allows them to be more supportive, Macuga said.
“They’re like my best friends, and just being able to have them there and their support through sports and just being sisters is so important to me. And it’s gotten me through so many challenges and successes, so it’s very important to me,” she said.
Chasing Olympic dreams
Macuga has had plenty to be proud of the last four years, but it hasn’t come as a huge surprise to the young skier.
The biggest shock so far was when she learned she made the U.S. Ski Team as a member of the new development team in 2022.
“I would say everything after that, like getting Rookie of the Year in 2023 and my two World Cup podiums last year (were) like surprises, but not in a way of like I didn’t think I could get that. Both of those, I knew I had the capability and experience to reach those points. But of course, like still hearing that I got a podium, it’s surprising, but in the best way. I was shocked just to finally hear those words because I’ve been waiting to hear and get those results my whole career, but also, I knew that I was able to get to that point,” she said.
Macuga’s recent success has put her dreams of competing in the Olympics within reach, though she’s on a U.S. team stacked with talent and stiff competition all vying for the title of Olympian next year. But she said it’s “such a good problem to have.”
“All of us obviously want to go to the Olympics, but we also know that, like, if I’m not going, my best friend’s going. So, of course, I’m going to cheer them on and be so happy for them,” she said. “We’re all just trying to ski our hardest, and we all know that we’re all there to ski as well as we can and have as much fun as we can to try and make the Olympics.”
To make the Olympic team, Macuga feels like it’s key to “just keep pushing myself” and “just having fun and enjoying it.”
“I find that I tend to compete the best when I’m confident in myself and have fun,” she said.
She wants to be able to put together competition and training runs that she’s proud of.
“Whether I win or get last, just if I have a run I’m very proud of and especially if I had lots of fun doing it, then that’s what I look forward to and that’s what I hope to get from every competition,” she said.
Macuga will look to do just that in Deer Valley this week in the women’s moguls and dual moguls on Thursday and Saturday, respectively.