E.C.’s Loomis Wraps Up Second Olympics With Team’s Longest Jump
skier predicts medals for Team USA in four years
V1 Staff |
Nordic combined athlete Ben Loomis, an Eau Claire native, and his teammates wrapped up their participation in the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing early Thursday by competing in the Men’s Team Large Hill/4x5km event.
As with other Nordic combined events, this one melds two different winter sports: cross-country skiing and ski jumping. Participants go for distance on a large-hill ski jump, then participate in a four-person cross-country relay. A formula is used to combine competitors’ jumping distances with their race times to create a single score.
Loomis – also a member of Team USA at the 2018 Games in South Korea – jumped for 129 meters, the longest distance for the Americans. Then, after teammate Taylor Fletcher bested all competitors in the relay’s first leg with a time of 12:16.3, Loomis skied the second leg of the relay in 12:52.3. Team USA’s combined course time was 51:09.1, second only to Norway. However, the Norwegians’ superior distances in the ski jumping portion of the competition propelled them to a gold medal. Germany earned silver, Japan the bronze, and the Americans placed sixth out of 10 teams.
“Overall, I thought that we had a really good day,” Loomis said. “Sixth place is really solid and one of our better results. Watching Taylor (Fletcher) go out and crush the first leg was very inspirational. I think that we put our best foot forward and did all that we could, and I’m very happy with how we performed.”
Loomis said he was already looking forward to the 2026 Winter Games in Italy.
“I think we are really going to continue to continue to grow as a team, and we are still very young,” he said. “We’ve got really great coaches and staff at USA Nordic, and I feel like every year everything is getting better. I believe we’re going to continue to get better as a team, and we will be up for some medals in 2026.”
Read more about the competition in this recap from the USA Nordic website.
