Lake Placid’s Tate Frantz competes this past weekend in the FIS Junior World Championships at Whistler, British Columbia. He will be entering his first FIS Ski Jumping World Cup this weekend in his hometown. (Provided photo — Tyler Ng/USA Nordic Sport)

LAKE PLACID — Tate Frantz says at this point in his career, he doesn’t really notice the thrill of ski jumping. Instead, the 17-year-old Lake Placid native is focused on his technique and form.

“When you really think about it, it’s pretty incredible. As soon as you let go of that bar and drop into the tracks there is no turning back,” he said. “You can’t just whip into a hockey stop or anything like that. You’re pretty locked in there and at that point, it’s just better to commit.

As soon as Frantz leaves the air, in that first millisecond, he knows if it’s a good or bad jump.

“And then you can just enjoy it and float down. It kind of just flows down as you’re sort of gaining height and speed and start floating. You can fly well over the length of a football field.”

While still young, Frantz has ski jumped at plenty of different venues around the world. He’s also competed in Continental Cups, an FIS Junior World Ski Championship and the FIS Cup.

But this weekend, he will jump in arguably his biggest competition to date in the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup at the Olympic Jumping Complex in Lake Placid from Friday to Sunday.

“With my first World Cup being here at home is going to be really special,” Frantz said. “Just getting to know the venue a little bit more. I don’t have much experience on this hill (the HS-128) in particular but it’ll be super awesome to have my first experience being at home at a place I’m a little more familiar with and people in the crowd I know super well.”

His parents are Mimi Wacholder and Ben Frantz, and he takes high school classes in Norway, where he currently lives.

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Homecoming

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Growing up in Lake Placid, skiing has always been a big part of Frantz’s life. He started skiing through the New York Ski Educational Foundation’s after-school program.

“There was just one after-school day where they would go and have a drop in and they’d get you some equipment,” he said. “Anybody can just show up and I decided that was something I was a bit interested in. After the first day I guess I didn’t turn back.”

Frantz first started to jump when he was 9 and soon began jumping off the 20-meter hill, when he met NYSEF coaches Larry Stone and Colin Delaney. His coaches help him progress as both a ski jumper and as a cross-country skier in the sport of Nordic combined. According to a January 2022 NYSEF athlete profile, he was originally coached by Andrew Bliss, Dave McCahill and Stone, followed by Delaney.

“I also had my first-ever jump on a 50-meter here, as well as, my first-ever jump on a 90-meter all at the same complex,” he said. “It’s definitely been a big part of my career. It’s been a place where I’ve taken a lot of my first jumps on larger hills and where I took my first-ever jump.”

Frantz will be the youngest competitor in this weekend’s World Cup. With many youngsters potentially watching the event, he said he wants younger pipeline athletes from NYSEF to know that it’s possible in just a few years to work your way to the top of the world.

“Just having anybody there just to motivate themselves off of not only seeing me, who is from NYSEF but also seeing all of the world champions and previous Olympic gold medalists and legitimately the best jumpers in the world jumping,” he said. “I think it will be motivating for any young athlete in any sport that is watching.”

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Fighting through pain

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Frantz wasn’t supposed to compete in this weekend’s World Cup. Less than a year ago, he was competing in Nordic combined, not ski jumping exclusively.

A few months after competing in the Lake Placid Continental Cup for Nordic combined in March 2022, he woke up one morning with pain in his knee. He doesn’t know exactly what happened, but the pain kept him from roller skiing and cross-country training.

“I’ve been to like four doctors, orthopedic surgeons and psychical therapists,” Frantz said. “I’ve had some MRIs and everybody says I’m alright and everything looks perfect. I’m just in pain and nobody knows why. I’m pretty much giving it time, but nobody really knows why.”

While still in pain, Frantz didn’t want to sit around and wait for the injury to go away.

“I decided if I can jump but can’t ski, I might as well go for it and jump,” he said. “It’s turned out pretty well.”

Frantz had his best finish on Jan. 14 during a Continental Cup in Sapporo, Japan, where he was by far the youngest competitor, placing 24th out of 46 competitors.

With Nordic combined being two sports rolled into one, most of the athletes are typically better in one discipline than the other.

Frantz has always been a better ski jumper.

“That usually comes with competing with people much older than me because they’ve had so much more time to train my endurance and everything,” he said.

While Frantz hasn’t officially switched sports, he went from being ranked around the top 15 in the U.S. for Nordic combined to being ranked top five for ski jumping.

“This very positive and great season so far has made me think about switching,” he said. “But that’s a question for a later date.”

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This season

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During the season, Frantz lives in Norway, where he’s been for almost two years. After a partnership with USA Nordic Sport and Norway’s governing body for ski jumping, the U.S. and Norway share coaches and the athletes train together.

“It’s been really cool to get to know some of the guys and to travel with them. Life over in Norway has been incredible,” he said. “It’s a super winter wonderland type of town. Kind of a fairy tale. It’s awesome to be training on some of the best hills in the world with some of the best coaches and to be around some of the top athletes in the world is pretty motivating as well.”

This season, Frantz has competed in four ski jumping competitions, with his most recent competition coming this past weekend in Whistler, Canada for the FIS Junior World Ski Championships. He placed 36th out of 51 competitors in the individual competition.

“That was unfortunately pretty awful,” he said. “It was a new hill and a long travel day before then and it was just not really my week there. I didn’t really love the hills for my jumping style personally.”

Frantz had some positive jumps in the training rounds and team competitions but had one bad jump in the individual competition, and that’s what counted in that competition.

“I jumped like 15 meters shorter than I had in training and other competitions, but that happens. You can’t control it,” he said. “The pressure got to me a little bit and I was jumping really well leading up to that. I just messed up one jump and unfortunately that one jump was the one that counted. I’m just trying to move on from there.”

With this weekend’s World Cup, Frantz said he doesn’t really have a goal in mind; he just wants to continue to jump well.

“There is a lot of people that have been to the Olympics and everything that won’t even end up qualifying,” he said. “I guess my biggest hope would be top-50 just to qualify for the individual on Saturday but whatever happens, happens. I guess I’d be satisfied just to have good jumps for myself, whatever that means. Stacking up against everyone else is a little more irrelevant in my first competition on the World Cup.”