Christmas came early for Nikki LaRochelle. The former ski mountaineering pro and longtime Breckenridge local is going to the Winter Olympics as a commentator for Olympic Broadcasting Services, the official broadcast provider at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
LaRochelle is a legend on the U.S. skimo scene, where competitors are part endurance athlete, part backcountry skier, tackling courses with thousands of vertical feet of climbing and highly technical ski descents. She has won the grueling Grand Traverse between Crested Butte and Aspen, often with her husband, Brad, as a teammate, and competed at two IFSA World Championships.
But LaRochelle is new to broadcasting.
“Being funny, but not too funny, being an expert but not being obnoxious or unrelatable,” LaRochelle tells Krystal 93. “There’s a lot of balancing as you go.”
Getting the gig
Usually, the Olympic broadcasting service wants former Olympians to call the Games. This year is the sport’s Olympic debut, meaning the field was open to former pros like LaRochelle.
It wasn’t easy. She went through several rounds of interviews.
“I kept waiting, you know, (to) get my letter of condolence,” she laughs. “Like, ‘You’re not going to be selected.’”
The letter never came. By round four she was called into London for a nerve-racking live audition.
“I was absolutely sweating bullets,” she remembers. “But it ended up being really fun.”
She nailed the final interview and got the gig. Within weeks she went to work, calling her first World Cup skimo event in Utah. As an athlete she spent hours in the “pain cave,” digging deep to keep moving for hours upon hours, sometimes after dark, often in the middle of nowhere through cold, remote mountains.
But even the pain cave could not prepare her for the leaky, damp confines of that first World Cup booth.
“The first day was totally disastrous from a technical standpoint,” she says. “We dad this echo (in my headset). We had water dripping from the roof of our tent. It was freezing. I was, quite frankly, really bothered, and I’m struggling to overcome those challenges in the moment.”
She says it was the best learning experience she could ask for.
“I’m ultimately thankful it happened because I think I can take that experience moving forward, knowing it might not always be super predictable and without incident,” she says. “I learned a lot. And then day two went perfectly smoothly and I’m thankful for that experience.”
Joining La Rochelle at the dripping booth in Utah, and again at the Olympics, is Brad Jay. He gives the play by play. She gives the color commentary.
“Some of these names, particularly China, Poland, Japan, they are so challenging,” LaRochelle says. “I spent a lot of time just working on my pronunciations. I felt like I owed the athlete that degree of respect to be able to pronounce their names correctly.”
Luckily, the team of LaRochelle and Jay will not be dealing with leaky roofs at the Olympics. They’ll be in a studio, where nothing can hide those special intangibles she brings to the booth.
“I bring a certain degree of energy to the commentary, good knowledge of the sport, good knowledge of the athletes currently racing on the World Cup circuit,” she says. “I have the acumen in the moment to try to speak articulately and concisely.”
You most likely will not see LaRochelle on the NBC Olympic broadcast. Instead, you can hear her on the Olympic Channel or at the International Skimo Federation stream on YouTube.
Olympic skimo racing begins Feb. 19.
Preview images via Evoke Endurance.
