By Nolin Ainsworth for the Juneau Empire
Wednesday, May 1, 2019 5:50pm – Anchorage-raised Olympian Kikkan Randall knows the hefty metal disc like the back of her hand.
She’s displayed it in thousands of photos, brought it all over the country with her and amusedly watched her 3-year-old son, Breck, tote it around.
But for the longest time, the Alaskan cross-country skier had no clue what it was like to hold an Olympic gold medal — or any Olympic medal for that matter. She didn’t want to. Not until one came into her possession.
“I never actually knew how much they weighed,” said Randall, who spoke to a sold-out audience on Wednesday afternoon at Centennial Hall. “When I leaned over and they put that medal around my neck, I almost fell off the podium.”
In a 53-minute talk for the third and final installment of the Pillars of America Speakers Series presented by the Juneau Glacier Valley Rotary Club, Randall detailed the long and arduous road that led up to her gold medal-winning performance in the women’s team sprint freestyle at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
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