“How can we make skiing more accessible? How can we bring more diversity into the sport? How can we make the sport more affordable?” These are some of the questions Jimmy Krupka’s ski racing podcast, Arc City, seeks to answer.
Krupka graduated from the Green Mountain Valley School in 2016 and has been training and racing since. In 2016, he qualified for the U.S. Development team and moved to Park City, Utah, shortly after graduating. He trained with the U.S. team for two years before being cut. He began studying at Dartmouth College in winter 2019, requalified for the U.S. team and has been training with the team since 2019, until he was cut recently. He’s not letting that slow him down, though. Soon, he’ll travel to Europe to race with the World Racing Academy to try to make it onto the World Cup circuit. In addition to podcasting and skiing, he is still a part-time student at Dartmouth College, which he attends in the spring semesters when not training. He is studying government with a minor in film.
In 2020, seeing that Ski Racing Media had a podcast vacancy, Krupka sent an email to the organization asking if he could fill it. To his surprise, they said yes. That led to him then launching his own podcast, which is presented by Stifel Financial and supported by U.S. Ski & Snowboard. Krupka produces and edits Arc City.
He has interviewed world champs and Olympian skiers such as Mikaela Shiffrin and Ryan Cochran-Siegle, as well as lesser-known skiers like four-time U.S. paralympic national champ Ralph Green, who Krupka called “one of the best one-legged skiers anywhere.” Krupka said that, while it’s fun talking to superstars like Shiffrin, he also enjoys interviewing people like Green and others who are making the industry more accessible and diverse.
“The podcast was inspired by the idea that there are so few media outlets in ski racing,” he said. “If you’re someone who’s excited about ski racing or want to learn, I started it in a lot of ways to fill that gap. It’s just fun for me to talk to people at the pinnacle of my sport. I can learn from them. And I’m able to have some sort of impact in some small way.”
He said he’s been stopped at the mountain by people who say they like the podcast. “It makes me feel like I’m contributing.”
