BIOGRAPHY:
A skier from the age of 9, Michael Ankeny became a national race winner at 10 and has quickly risen to the top of the junior ranks. With dozens of top-10 finishes, he earned a spot on the U.S. Development Team prior to the '09 season and made his World Cup debut in 2011.

Ankeny made the most of his final year as a junior by racing everything at the 2011 Junior World Championships in Switzerland, but that was only after making his World Cup debut with the classic slalom in Kitzbuehel, Austria.

He then rolled home to finish fourth overall in the Putnam U.S. Alpine Championships slalom, earning him top junior honors in both the race and in the combined. Here's the kicker…it was the first season that junior champions where awarded the coveted U.S. Ski Team belt buckles. He took both with him for the spring semester at Dartmouth.

MICHAEL SAYS:
"It feels really good to get a junior national title. They say that the year after your last junior year is the hardest and that’s what I’m going to take into next year. I didn’t really have the season that I wanted to, but this is exactly the way I wanted to end it - skiing solid and with confidence."

FIRST TRACKS:
A product of the famed Buck Hill program in Minnesota – the same that helped produce Olympians Lindsey Vonn and Kristina Koznick – Ankeny didn't start skiing until age nine, but it didn't take him long to get up to speed after winning his first junior race at 10. After making the U.S. Development Team prior to the '09 season, Ankeny began spending his summers in Park City sweating at the Center of Excellence and the rest is yet to be written.

OFF THE SNOW:
When not on snow, he's diving through the books at Dartmouth each spring. If time allows, it's all about kicking the soccer ball, listening to hip hop and attempting the slack line and trying not to remember the haircut Ted Ligety gave him after making his World Cup debut in 2011.