Long before she drifted into the professional Nordic skiing sphere, Lauren Jortberg’s classmates at Boulder High School knew she was destined for something great. The caption in her 2015 yearbook, alongside a photo of her and classmate Christian Feiler, read, “Future Olympians: This duo defined the athletic prowess of Boulder High School. Their talents surely qualified this pair for the Olympics. Be on the look-out for these two in the coming years!” Eleven years later, the prophecy is coming true. But the past two months for the now 28-year-old Jortberg played out more like a nightmare, especially the night before she learned she’d been selected for the United States cross country ski team for the Milan Cortina Games. She received the news Jan. 11. “Essentially, I got an email from the head of the U.S. ski team before heading over to Europe, (saying) that the Olympic Committee would book all my flights for me because I was likely to be on the Olympic team,” Jortberg explained. “I think that was just a moment of, like, ‘Whoa.’ “I didn’t get the email because I went to bed before the emails were sent, and I had a horrible dream that they just decided to go against the criteria and went the discretionary route. I woke up in an absolute sweat that I didn’t make the team, and then I looked at my phone and I saw the email.” Skiers have a sort of three-month “trial period” to prove they’re worthy of the…
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