Brothers beyond: Alpine skier Atle McGrath on balancing friendship and rivalry with teammate Lucas Braathen

“I think it’s the only time I’ve seen him cry,” giggles Norwegian Alpine skier Atle McGrath of his teammate Lucas Braathen. The 21-year-old slalom specialist is not being mean, he’s talking about a shared experience the Norwegian Alpine ski team had in May in which he, Braathen and just about every other member of the team ended up in tears, too.

The #attackingvikings – such is their moniker on social media – spent five days doing commando-style training in Harstad, Northern Norway, with the Norwegian Coastal Ranger Commando unit. The aim was to not only bond as a team but also find ways to manage their own individual strengths and weaknesses when performing under pressure.

“It started off with us, literally, we were sleeping, and then at four in the morning, we heard gunshots and explosions and they came and kidnapped us in just our boxers and put pillowcases over our heads,” McGrath tells Olympics.com looking incredulous even now, eight months on. “It was just a crazy experience (but) we had an amazing week. I learnt a lot and we really found our boundaries and pushed the limit.”

The challenge that broke those particular limits, resulting in a teary-eyed squad, was when the group was tasked with standing in the freezing Arctic Ocean, for around 12 minutes, said McGrath. They were asked questions, which, if they got them wrong, meant they had to dip themselves into the water, head fully under. When they were finally let back on land, things briefly got better, before they got worse. Much worse.

“We had no towels or anything, so we just had to (put) all our clothes on, fully wet, and run around to get warm. And then, when they said, ‘Okay, we're going to challenge you to go out again’, people kind of fell apart.

"Lucas was totally quiet but I looked at him over my shoulder and he was standing there, the tears were just running down and he couldn't stop it… I think everyone cried, like I cried as well. It was one of those… you just felt so small and vulnerable.”

The team were perhaps expecting a little leeway, smiles McGrath, due to it being less than one year before the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, which start 4 February, where the minutiae of elite athlete preparation – from nutrition to training to sleep – are vital.

“But that was like one of the things that was the biggest focus," said McGrath. "They didn't give us sleep and they didn't give us food, which is very rare for high-performing athletes like us, but that made us learn even more about how to perform when you're more than just physically tired, you're like mentally tired and hungry.”

McGrath calls it, “a life-changing experience”, while Braathen described it in an Instagram post as “the coolest week ever” detailing their experience as boys becoming men who had also “become stronger as a team than I ever thought was possible”.

This is bad news for their competitors. Norway had become world champions in the mixed team event in Cortina d'Ampezzo in February 2021, even before the squad bonding event, and without much of their core team due to injury. Norway must be favourites for the mixed team parallel slalom event at Beijing 2022, then, which takes place on 19 February.

"I think the bond we have in our team is probably the strongest out there. We're not just team-mates, we're really, really good friends."

Brothers beyond

McGrath’s and Braathen’s bromance is documented on social media, from supportive comments on each other's posts to funny times together, the strength of feeling no surprise given the pair have known each other since they were kids.

“Lucas and I, we've been skiing together since we were, I think, 10 or 11 years old in the same ski club and I've always said that it's never a coincidence that we've come up together the same way. Pretty much we followed each other.

"Like throughout all the years going into the Europa Cup, it's like he does well, then I do well. And then coming into World Cup, it's the same. He wins his first race (at the slalom in Sölden, Austria in the giant slalom in October 2020), a few weeks later I take my first podium (second place in the giant slalom in Alta Badia, Italy on 20 Dec 2020), and then we both were kind of injured the same day in the same race, and when that happened I was like, we officially should just get married because this is like fate, this is starting to get a bit creepy.”

During their formative years, the twosome managed to find a balance between being good friends and competitive rivals, however.

“Lucas and I have a great way of dividing our friendship where we're really fierce competitors – I think we'd both say he's my biggest competitor and I'm his biggest – but we're able to put a line between competition and the rest because being friends and competitors at the same time is almost not possible... It's been a lot of trying and failing but I feel like we have a really good balance right now.”

So much so, when Braathen stunned the skiing world with a history-making run at the slalom event in Wengen, Switzerland in the slalom on 16 January 2022, going from 29th in the first run (only the top 30 made it through to the second run), to first place by the end of the second – his friend who was watching back at the hotel couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Braathen had raced first so McGrath could hear from the loud speakers on the course that his friend had made a big mistake or maybe was even out. McGrath had recently broken his thumb so wasn't at his best during the competition, so did not make it to the second run. On catching up with Braathen, he asked him how his run had gone but Braathen said, 'I'm not making this like, I've made too big of a mistake'."

So a tough day for both of them they thought, until they saw that Braathen was 29th, just squeaking into the second run. After telling his teammate to "crush this thing", and to "make sure you put on a bit of a show, make it entertaining", McGrath headed back to the hotel.

"The weather's getting warmer and I'm like, this could be good for Lucas because he's starting early. And then he goes down and I'm just like, 'okay, this is exactly how we do it in training and he skied a great run'. And right away, as he finished across the finish line, all of us – we have a group chat, all the boys – it exploded, and we were like 'easily top five'. And then Leif Kristian Nestvold-Haugen, he was like, 'that's not top five, that's podium, maybe even the win'. And there were 28 more athletes to go and they just kept coming and behind, behind, and I was like, 'This is crazy'.

"At some point they were getting pretty close and I was like, 'Oh, okay, now they're maybe going to start going in front of him, but still it's going to be like a top six-seven result'... Then all of a sudden he was on the podium, which was like, 'oh my god, this is insane'.

"And then he was standing there, leading the race with only one racer to go. And of course, Henrik Kristoffersen skied (their Norwegian teammate), and he truly skied amazing. It was a great, great performance by him, and if he didn't straddle at the end there, he would have won the race by probably over a second, and that is just reality, but you have to finish. So when he got that gate between his legs, I was like speechless.

"I almost cried a little bit because I feel like Lucas and I both, we've seen how much it takes because we've been working out together every single day since our injury. Like we got injured in January last year and pretty much for a full year, we've been working out together, like in the dark, doing everything we can to get back and the fact that he finally got this full payback, it was really, really, really cool.”

Blood brothers

The injuries to which McGrath refers happened at Adelboden in January 2021. Both suffered knee injuries – tearing their MCLs with compatriot Aleksander Aamodt Kilde injuring his ACL a week later. All were out for the rest of the season just one year out from Beijing 2022.

Initially, McGrath said he was managing the disappointment but then things changed.

"At the start I was like, 'This sucks, but I'm going to manage it'. But then it wasn't really until I had gone about a month and I was really into the rehab process and watching all my teammates race, and it just hit me like how tough this was. And then being at home pretty much alone during COVID times, I wasn't allowed to see any friends, I was only with my family stuck at home and like the only person I saw was Lucas. So both of us were in a pretty dark place, I would say at times, and that's hard to dig your way out of it in a situation like this."

By November the pair were back on the slope "the best way for me to get happier again", he posted. They also decided to get involved in Movember – the fundraising initiative that encourages moustache growth – the more extravagant the better – to raise awareness of men's health issues such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer and men's suicide.

"I'm not going to lie, I started saving up about a week and a half before November started," laughs McGrath after he'd struggled to grow much of a moustache when he'd tried to get involved the previous year. After getting his teammates on board, he contacted Movember to say he'd like to do something with them to raise money. When he started getting on the podium he'd point out his 'stash' "and made a big deal out of it, and that was a great way to showcase it, and the fundraiser went amazing. I think in a span of 15 days, I raised almost $4,500. So that was a really good thing".

Family affair

Qualifying for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games is the next thing the duo have achieved together, for which McGrath couldn't be more proud. As well as that, he becomes the second Olympian in his family, with his dad, Felix McGrath, achieving the same thing in Calgary 1988, also in Alpine skiing but competing for the US. His Norwegian mother, Selma Lie, competed in cross-country skiing but McGrath junior credits his dad's sneaky ways with his choice of Alpine skiing.

"It was always Alpine skiing that was my favourite, mostly because of my dad. He was a real smart one. My mom, she would bring me Nordic skiing and be like, 'Okay, if you walk up this hill here, I'll give you a little bit of chocolate or half a cracker. But my dad, he brought me skiing and I realised I could take a ski lift up and I could ski down, which wasn't tiring, and then he bought this huge cinnamon bun every time I went skiing. So I always dedicate my skiing career to my dad being pretty smart and this big cinnamon bun that convinced me."

His mum won the where-to-live round though. After meeting at the University of Vermont in the US and going on to have a family, McGrath junior was two-and-a-half years old when his mum suggested they "move to Norway for just one year and see how it is? And my dad was like, 'Okay, let's do it', and then we just never moved back," laughs McGrath. "So it was a master plan from my mother."

Value-led outlook

So the future looks bright, even the immediate future at Beijing 2022, which starts 4 February, for the Norwegian Alpine ski team. Working hard, enjoying each other's company and with a values system put in place by those who have come before them, says McGrath.

"Ever since the Norwegian team started doing well – I think it was in the 80s – those guys set the benchmark for what the Norwegian team and the values were going to be. And then we've been so lucky that we have had some great, great people and role models for the team."

A classic video from the era showcases the team weren't short of a few laughs either.

"In recent years, they have been led by Aksel Lund Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud, those two guys who were like the biggest guys, not just the best skiers on the team, but also the people who really put their foot down, like this is how the culture is going to be.

"So this isn't something that we've made, I take absolutely zero credit for the team spirit we have, but I'm very glad that I'm in a team now where we have so many good people. It's (good) to (know) that when Axl retired – and Kjetil might be done soon as well – that they don't feel... that culture is going to disappear right away. I feel like we have a really good team around us."

The Alpine skiing competition starts at Beijing 2022 on Sunday 6 February with the men's downhill.