Cranbrook ski cross athlete India Sherret has been nominated to the Canadian Ski Team, ahead of the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics in Italy.
Alpine Canada announced Sherret and her teammates in June, following one of her most successful seasons on record. Sherret ranked in the top five for nearly all of her World Cup events in the 2024-25 season, with six podium finishes in the the span of a few months at competitions in Val Thorens, France, Reiteralm, Austria, and Arosa, Switzerland.
She was the only Canadian on the podium at the World Cup in Gudauri, Georgia, in February, in third place.
"I started to build some confidence. I started performing well. I was able to learn from those good performances, and also when things didn't quite go my way. It was easier to find patterns when I was performing consistently," said Sherret.
Sherret has her sights set on making the Olympics, Feb. 6 to 22 in Italy. The qualification period runs until the end of January, and Sherret said the women's team is strong this year, so she's expecting some stiff competition.
Sherret will be racing in five World Cup events in December, and another handful in January, with two counting towards Olympic qualifications. Right now, she's focused on building strength and preparing mentally, as she trains in Calgary.
She made her Olympic debut in 2018, only to suffer a crash and subsequent injuries. She looks forward to making a comeback if she makes the Olympic team this coming year.
"Nobody expected me to qualify. At the second last race of our qualifiers, I had my first podium, which gave me the result that I needed to make the team. It all happened so fast. I went into 2018 so wildly underprepared," she recalled.
"The point in my career at my first Olympics versus now, eight years is a lot of time, a lot has happened, pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum of how prepared you can be for the Olympics," she added.
Sherret started out her career in alpine racing with the Kimberley Alpine Team, then known as the North Star Racers. She switched to ski cross at age 13 and worked her way up to skiing with Team Alberta.
"It's just a little bit more fun and playful and you're racing right next to people. It's a little bit more exciting, unpredictable," said Sherret, as she compared the two sports.
"We probably have one of the highest levels of variability that can happen in a race," she added.
