Today on THE WARMUP we hear from five-time gold medalist Leslie Ruder, the undisputed queen of the Summit 50+ Winter Games.
“This kind of put the competitive spirit back in me,” Reuter says of the 50+ Games, which took place over three days earlier this month with alpine skiing, uphill racing, ice events, and even a biathlon.
That competitive spirit runs deep for Leslie. She grew up skiing in her back yard in Minnesota.
“We had a hill in our back yard, and we would ski down and hike up and ski down and hike up,” she remembers. “Sometimes Dad would pull us up on the snowmobile.”
Leslie went on to race at the Junior Olympics and for the University of Minnesota ski team. She says racing gates was her “ringer” even.
But how’d she also manage to win the hockey shoot at the 50+ Games?
“I felt like that kind of came back to me, holding a hockey stick,” she says. “I did a lot of broomball and hockey growing up.”
For years after graduating college, she traveled the globe as a competitive adventure racer, where small teams race for hours or even days at a time on foot, mountain bike and technical mountaineering routes – plotting their own course as they go.
“I love how competitive it was, and how you had to use strategy to outwit the other teams,” she says.
Now, Leslie has found a new passion, the 50-plus Games. She went undefeated in every event she entered for the women’s 50-59 division. And it was only her first year.
“It was the best three days,” she says. I think it’s only a successful because of all the volunteers. If you weren’t racing, you were volunteering it, and that’s why I wanted to volunteer as well, to cheer on the other athletes.
Leslie wasn’t the only repeat gold medalist this year:17 athletes over 50 went home with at least two gold medals.