The top 10 of the women’s 5K individual start classic at the 2018 FIS Junior World Ski Championships has a few names current cross-country ski fans surely recognize.

Kristine Stavaas Skistad, Norway’s best sprinter, is there in fifth. Frida Karlsson — a 13-time world championship medalist — tied for seventh with her current World Cup teammate, Moa Lundgren. The silver medalist that day?

Hailey Swirbul.

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The El Jebel skier’s scintillating start — multiple world junior medals, a World Cup podium at age 22, two world championship teams and an Olympics by 24 — was about as shocking as her end. After barely four seasons on the World Cup, Swirbul walked away in 2023.

“She’s definitely one of the most talented athletes that’s ever presented themselves on the landscape of U.S. cross-country skiing,” U.S. Ski Team program director Chris Grover told the Vail Daily on a recent phone call, pointing to the fact that the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club alumna is the only skier in history to claim two individual world junior medals.

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“Jessie (Diggins) doesn’t have that, Gus (Schumacher) doesn’t have that. Rosie Brennan, Ben Ogden don’t have that,” Grover continued. “I think we all felt in the community that she was stepping back too early when she hadn’t really untapped her potential.”

Now, going into another Olympic season, Swirbul wants to find out what she can do.

“I have a completely renewed perspective and mindset about getting to compete and have ski racing be a job,” she said regarding her pro comeback. “It’s the greatest job I can imagine.”

Last race in Lahti

Swirbul placed 26th in her last World Cup race, a 20K mass start in Lahti, Finland on March 23, 2023. At the time, she felt confident in her choice to leave skiing behind. She sold most of her gear, picked up a gig at an engineering firm and even did some ski patrol work in Colorado. Swirbul also started coaching juniors at her club, Alaska Pacific University. This summer, she began working with APU’s elite team, the group responsible for producing most of America’s cross-country skiing Olympians.

Swirbul started building fitness while training alongside many of the best skiers in the country until one day, 2022 Olympians Novie McCabe and Luke Jager somewhat jokingly asked if she was thinking of pulling a Michael Jordan. Swirbul laughed it off. The seed, however, had been planted. It was watered by Oliver Burkeman’s book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.”

“There were some topics in that book that really made me think and kind of have to face what I want to do with my life and this chapter,” she said. “There’s a time limit on if I actually want to try and find the limits of what I can push my body and mind to do in terms of athletic pursuits.”

Swirbul realized some of the more permanent-feeling life decisions — like going all-in on a winter sport (or giving it up) — weren’t actually all that permanent.

“It’s going to be OK either way,” she explained, adding that what matters is “choosing something meaningful.”

“And you can make your life work.”

The gears were already turning when Grover sat down with Swirbul during a U.S. Ski Team on-snow training camp in Alaska at the end of June.

“At that time she was still kind of formulating the idea in her head,” he said.

After hiring Swirbul as a coach last spring, Erik Flora was delighted to see his APU elite team pupil consider a return to high-level racing.

“Her over all fitness is good,” the program director and elite team head coach stated. “She has a strong base from a lifetime of training and outdoor activity. Also, (a) tremendous ability to race.”

A few months later, Swirbul proved his point, winning a 10K rollerski skate race at the Schutzenski Festival at Soldier Hollow. While Diggins, the 2023 world champion at the distance, was absent due to a minor toe injury, Swirbul topped a 38-member field that contained U.S. Ski Team members Julia Kern, Haley Brewster, Kendall Kramer and Kate Oldham.

“She hasn’t even been training a full year and been away from formalized training for awhile and she just shows up and wins something like that,” Grover commented. “It gives you a glimpse of what her ability is.”

Swirbul is admittedly embracing an “experimental” mentality in this comeback. Instead of checking every box, she’s interested to see just how rigid training has to be.

“I kind of want to figure out where can I go with this through the lens of curiosity rather than perfection,” she said. “And just having that mindset is so different. It’s so liberating to just do this process and be part of this journey.”

Being on the coaching side has given her a new perspective, especially when it comes to the stress-recovery balance. She’s more aware of the adrenal cost of going all-out too often and being all-in all the time. While acknowledging necessary physiological ingredients, Swirbul isn’t keen on getting lost in the weeds of complexity or precision in an era where heart rate monitors, double threshold workouts and mid-session lactate pricking is ubiquitous. Instead, she’s looking to use her “limited nervous system energy” to get the most bang for her buck. She’s also adopted a “more wholistic view of how skiing fits into a life” instead of the other way around.

“I think it’s this really beautiful dance,” Swirbul said. “It’s been helpful to see that from the outside.”

Flora isn’t surprised to see Swirbul gain a new perspective from holding the proverbial clipboard.

“APU has had several coaches return to racing with good experience and results,” he commented. “Hailey is a gifted competitor. I think coaching has been a great vehicle for (her) to be around skiing again.”

Swirbul wasn’t the only up-and-coming talent from her era to walk away early. Katharine Ogden and 2022 Olympian Hannah Halvorsen — two other World Junior medalists who left the sport in their mid-20s — were also establishing themselves as the U.S. women’s team entered the sport’s elite echelon. Diggins famously teamed up with Kikkan Randall to win the country’s first Olympic gold medal in 2018 before capturing distance and overall globes in 2021, 2024 and 2025. The Minnesota-born star added two more Olympic medals in Beijing.

While Swirbul doesn’t blame anyone, she said culturally, the collective successes created a pressure “to be better younger (and) faster.” The straw that broke the camel’s back was COVID.

“It was brutal. Those two years were so not fun,” Grover said. “It made me want to quit my job.”

“Right as we were entering the World Cup scene is when things became isolating,” Swirbul added. “We were kids.”

Getting to experience a “normal” Olympics is one reason Swirbul wants to come back.

The road to Milano Cortina

Swirbul currently has no FIS points.

“I’m completely starting from zero,” she said.

Thankfully, the first chance to start climbing begins on home turf: The first FIS races of the winter are at Kincaid Park in Anchorage next weekend. Then, Alaska hosts back-to-back Super Tour weekends in early December. If Swirbul is the overall leader after those four races — something she’s done before in the fall — she’d earn a spot to race in the Tour de Ski, the World Cup’s premiere event, over New Years. If not, she’d head to Lake Placid for U.S. Senior Nationals. Both routes provide a pathway to Milano Cortina.

“I don’t really know the best strategy,” Swirbul said. “I don’t want to try to play the game. I’m not only doing this to try to make the Olympics.”

The U.S. has the max quota allocation for the Games; Grover said it’s unlikely all eight spots will be filled via World Cup selection criteria.

“There will almost certainly be a number of women who qualify from Super Tour, also,” he said, adding that Swirbul — a threat in sprint and distance races on the classic and skate side — is a favorite on the domestic circuit.

“She’s uniquely talented — she’s fast and has endurance,” he continued. “For somebody who is coming back like Hailey, we have almost the ideal selection criteria of any country because there’s no pre-selection from previous seasons.”

While Grover admitted the U.S. has historically struggled to find reliable classic skiers, he said it would be “putting the cart before the horse” to simply slide Swirbul — who skied the first leg of the 4×5-kilometer event at global championships in 2021, 2022 and 2023 — into a coveted relay spot.

“We want to see all the women, including those who may not be on our radar already but are developing,” he said, adding that often, relay decisions factor in athletes’ momentum coming into the Games and even at the event itself.

“There’s so many factors,” he said. “It’s so far in the future, I don’t think it’s really worth speculating about. In the past, she’s someone who can fill any role.”

Flora thinks there’s a good chance Swirbul could be booking flights to Cortina in February.

“With Hailey’s background, I think she is in a good fighting position for a place on the Olympic team,” he said. “It is going to be exciting.”

Regardless, the U.S. Ski Team is happy she’s returning.

“She’s someone we really like as a human being and like to spend time with,” Grover said. “Everybody’s excited to have her back to ski race again.”

Swirbul said one regret she had when she retired the first time was not growing into a veteran leadership role on the U.S. Ski Team.

“I benefited so greatly from having those types of teammates in my life,” she said. “To get to pass on what you’ve learned and earned from being in the trenches yourself to the next generation — there’s so much wisdom and mentorship in that.”

Other than re-qualifying for the national team, spending time on the World Cup and trying to make a second Olympics, her other goal for the year is a bit more abstract: Swirbul said she wants to “stay true to myself.”

“I want to stay confident in that plan,” she added. “And remember why I’m doing this.”