Garrott Kuzzy is competing in the Winter Olympics 2010 in Vancouver in cross-country skiing.
Unique names are not a rarity on the U.S. cross-country skiing team. Garrott Kuzzy's first name is simply the maiden name of his mother, Beth. His last name is the shortened form of the Lithuanian surname Kazakevicius. His father, Jim, officially switched it, but before that, his grandparents were always known as the "Kuzzys."
Kuzzy's first foray into skiing started in Alpine at age three, on the moderately-sized slopes of the Twin Cities area and northern Wisconsin. At age 12, he tried out Nordic combined, the sport that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing. At about the same time, he remembers watching epic events unfold at the 1994 Lillehammer Games on television, including the ski jumping competition and "The Great Race" in cross country, the men's 4x10km duel between Norway and Italy culminating in the famous Bjoern Daehlie vs. Silvio Fauner race to the finish line. Kuzzy turned his complete focus to cross country in eighth grade.
Kuzzy graduated from Middlebury College in 2006 with a double major in German and geography. An avid mountain bike racer, Kuzzy works part-time at New Moon Ski & Bike Shop in Hayward, Wisconsin, during the offseason. Another hobby-turned-summer job involves geographic information system (GIS) mapping. He makes a rule each summer of taking on one or two new cartography projects. In 2009, he worked on a mountain bike map for the Hayward Tourist Bureau, having already completed a similar map for a bike shop in southern Vermont. On the sporting front, he would like to ski the anchor leg of the men's 4x10km relay at the 2010 Olympics.
Kuzzy is one of several members of his family to succeed in athletics. Father Jim is a Worldloppet (world ski marathon circuit) master, sister Laura raced cross-country at the University of New Hampshire, and little sister Martha, a sophomore at the University of Virginia, was a member of the U-19 world champion U.S. women's rowing eight in 2008, and could be a future Summer Olympian.
Unique names are not a rarity on the U.S. cross-country skiing team. Garrott Kuzzy's first name is simply the maiden name of his mother, Beth. His last name is the shortened form of the Lithuanian surname Kazakevicius. His father, Jim, officially switched it, but before that, his grandparents were always known as the "Kuzzys."
Kuzzy's first foray into skiing started in Alpine at age three, on the moderately-sized slopes of the Twin Cities area and northern Wisconsin. At age 12, he tried out Nordic combined, the sport that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing. At about the same time, he remembers watching epic events unfold at the 1994 Lillehammer Games on television, including the ski jumping competition and "The Great Race" in cross country, the men's 4x10km duel between Norway and Italy culminating in the famous Bjoern Daehlie vs. Silvio Fauner race to the finish line. Kuzzy turned his complete focus to cross country in eighth grade.
Kuzzy graduated from Middlebury College in 2006 with a double major in German and geography. An avid mountain bike racer, Kuzzy works part-time at New Moon Ski & Bike Shop in Hayward, Wisconsin, during the offseason. Another hobby-turned-summer job involves geographic information system (GIS) mapping. He makes a rule each summer of taking on one or two new cartography projects. In 2009, he worked on a mountain bike map for the Hayward Tourist Bureau, having already completed a similar map for a bike shop in southern Vermont. On the sporting front, he would like to ski the anchor leg of the men's 4x10km relay at the 2010 Olympics.
Kuzzy is one of several members of his family to succeed in athletics. Father Jim is a Worldloppet (world ski marathon circuit) master, sister Laura raced cross-country at the University of New Hampshire, and little sister Martha, a sophomore at the University of Virginia, was a member of the U-19 world champion U.S. women's rowing eight in 2008, and could be a future Summer Olympian.