Alice Merryweather begins her return to the snow with fresh perspective: "Being the perfect athlete means taking care of myself"
The 2018 alpine skiing Olympian, who has recovered from an eating disorder and a scary crash in September 2021, explains how her mindset on perfection has changed: “Oftentimes, we don’t talk about how quickly it can shift from being a really hard worker to being way over the edge and starting to hurt yourself," the 26-year-old said in this exclusive interview.
Alpine Skiing
Two weeks ago, as Alice Merryweather got back on her skis for the first time in some 18 months, she didn’t want to think about the occasion as anything special.
“I’ve had so much time to think about what it would be like to get back on snow that I just wanted to kind of pretend that it was normal,” said the 2018 Olympian, during an exclusive interview with Olympics.com last week.
“And it mostly was until I actually laid my skis on the snow, and I clicked my boots in and had to ski down to the chairlift. And I was like, ‘Wait, how am I going to get down to the chairlift?’ But it came back so quickly!”
Merryweather’s return to skiing comes after an arduous journey to rehab the multiple injuries she sustained in a downhill training crash in September 2021. That crash came after the 26-year-old had spent months recovering from battling an eating disorder.
The US Team skier has been very public about her struggles with disordered eating, something that began in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the world shut down into uncertainty.
“When I made the decision to not start racing on the World Cup that season and go to treatment instead, I didn't want to just tell people like, ‘Oh, I'm just not ready to race,’” explained Merryweather of her choice to speak so openly.
“Like, it just made sense to me to be like, ‘Well, I'm just going to tell the truth and say like, this is what's happening in my life.’”
Alice Merryweather on facing eating disorder: "Jessie Diggins had paved the way"
She credits Olympic teammate Jessie Diggins, the 2018 team sprint gold medallist with Kikkan Randall, for having opened the door to talk about her struggles. Diggins wrote an emotional blog post, detailing her own struggles with body image and eating in June 2018.
“Jessie Diggins had paved the way,” said Merryweather. “Talking about mental health wasn't a super popular topic yet. But it was on the rise, and I felt comfortable enough because these other women and athletes had paved the way to create that space where I could feel comfortable saying, you know, candidly, this is what I'm going through.
“In a weird way, it was therapeutic pretty instantly for me to say, ‘You know what, this is what's happening to me, and I hope that anyone else who is dealing with this doesn't feel like they're alone because I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't feel like I'm alone.”
She sees the major progress that has occurred in the sports in the last half decade or so around mental health but sees one area in particular that can still use some growth.
“I think there's a lot that can continue to improve across kind of the staff-athlete divide in terms of culture and conversations that are happening because while a lot of our staff and adults are really in tune with what's going on and are well versed in mental health, I think there's sort of a generational divide where, like finally my generation has been raised understanding the mental health is important and like the kids also are even more in tune with this than I am,” explained Merryweather.
“But I think that the generations who are coaching us and leading us weren't given that. They weren't taught anything about mental health or eating disorders or any of that. And so thankfully, a lot of people that I'm surrounded by have been really open to learning and want to be resources. But I think that there's still some discomfort there in having really open and vulnerable conversations.”
Alice Merryweather: "I'm now a recovering perfectionist"
In a way, says Merryweather, the work she did on her mental health prepared her for the physical rehab.
“I think some of what made the physical recovery a bit easier was knowing that I'd just been through the hardest experience of my life in overcoming the eating disorder,” she explained. “I just rewired my brain over the last year, so this is going to be easier than that.
“I also learned to really appreciate the small things,” she continued. I just kind of latched on to that as my main method of getting through where I’ve appreciated being able to go to school – maybe it’s not what I would have liked to be doing for the last year and a half – I would have loved to go to the Olympics and ski on the World Cup this year, but I’ve been able to go to school and I’ve been able to spend more time with my family and reconnect with other goals of mine and other parts of my life.”
As her healing process continues, Merryweather has had to shift one major part of her mindset.
Previously, Merryweather had viewed herself as a perfectionist, and that trait was something that had gotten her to the Olympics and the top level of her sport.
“I’m now a recovering perfectionist,” said Merryweather. “Oftentimes, we don’t talk about how quickly it can shift from being a really hard worker to being way over the edge and starting to hurt yourself. I just assumed I was still doing good things. I was being the perfect athlete in pushing myself way too hard and in eating only foods that I deemed clean enough or healthy enough.”
Alice Merryweather: Looking to the future with no pressure
Today, her mindset on perfection is much different.
“Being the perfect athlete means taking care of myself,” she said concisely. “I’ve just learned to listen to what I need more and to appreciate what my body can do instead of trying to force it to do something that it can’t.”
What she can do remains to be seen.
Merryweather says she’ll continue to try to keep the pressure and the “hype” around her return to skiing manageable.
“I’m still not trying to pressure myself to feel anything,” she said. “I just want to enjoy the process for what it is and be grateful that I’ve been able to come so far back from where I was in September of 2021.”
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a few big goals in mind.
“My goal is to get back to the World Cup and hopefully race in the 2026 Olympics,” says Merryweather. “And be happy and healthy."
“I mean realistically, if I can find the passion that I've always had for skiing and can ski the way that I know that I have within me and it's enjoyable and it makes sense, then I'm going to continue pursuing skiing with everything that I have,” she continued, before adding, “And if I get back to full capacity and the joy isn't there or there's a lot of pain and that outweighs it then, yeah, I think realistically, I'll take my life in a different direction. I'm not trying to put too much pressure on myself at this point. I just… I'm loving it. I'm loving being back right now, and so I'm just going to ride that.”