National Careers Week 2022: Cross Country Skiing and Social Economics with Lars Young Vik

When you’re 21 years old and you’ve just made your Winter Olympics debut, it can be hard to find time to pursue a second career outside of sport, or even prepare for a possible career after retirement. And yet, national cross-country skiing team member Lars Young Vik is just one of many examples of athletes who successfully juggle their training and competition with a part-time job or an education. 

To celebrate National Career Week (16-22 May), the annual event promoted by the Career Industry Council of Australia to support career development, many organisations including Snow Australia, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), the NSW Institute of Sport (NSWIS) and the Victoria Institute of Sport (VIS) are offering athletes like Young Vik resources, webinars and workshops to help shine a light on career opportunities and support networks available for high-performance athletes.

“Obviously maintaining work or studies during the competition season can be difficult,” admitted Young Vik, who started skiing at two years of age in his Norwegian father’s home country before representing his mother’s country Australia in international competition.

“I usually try to set aside an hour or two a day for studies during training camps or competition periods, but that's not always possible. I've tried to make sure I'm a bit ahead on my subjects before the season and put some more work in after the most important competitions to keep up,” he said.

After finishing school two years ago, Young Vik spent some of his time off-snow working part-time at a ski shop and studying. Later in the year he will further his education at the University of Oslo (Norway), studying Social Economics.

Despite the additional academic workload that lies ahead, Young Vik said he welcomes the opportunity to have a secondary focus outside of skiing.

“Obviously it’s very important for a high-performance athlete to make sure your training, rest and recovery are priority number one,” Vik explained.

“But I would say that it’s almost crucial to manage the balance between your sport and your studies, or work, to improve as an athlete. Making sure that structure and balance are in place is key,” he said.

Last season was particularly positive for the young skier, who decided to focus on shorter events and made his Olympic debut at Beijing 2022 in the Sprint Freestyle, where he finished as the second-best Aussie behind Olympic veteran Phil Bellingham.

Just a few weeks after, Young Vik placed 29th in the Men’s 1.2km Sprint at the Under 23 FIS Cross-country World Championships, a result that earned him a spot in an exclusive group of only six Australian cross-country athletes able to achieve a top-30 U23 result, alongside Olympians Esther Bottomley, Ben Sim, Aimee Watson, Phil Bellingham and Casey Wright. 

Faced with the upcoming challenge of balancing university studies and a blooming skiing career, Young Vik knows he will need to rely on his support network to ensure he can continue to do well in both areas.

“Having family, friends and other crucial persons that are aware of your daily life problems and struggles makes balancing everything a lot easier.

“Life as an athlete depends on a lot more than just coaches, equipment, and staff. Being surrounded by a positive and understanding network in your daily life makes it way easier to succeed in both your sport and career,” he said.

Then, of course, there are some places where the two paths intersect, allowing athletes to develop transferable skills that can help with both sport and studying, such as learning the importance of a goal-oriented, structured approach, or the value of hard work.  

“The handiest skill is probably [learning] the Excel shortcuts to set up my training plan, though!” joked Young Vik.