John Caldwell - Olympian, coach, author, father of cross-country skiing

John Caldwell, known as the father of cross-country skiing in America, died on February 27, 2026, in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was 97.

John Caldwell, Jr. was born in Detroit. The family moved to Pennsylvania and then, in 1941, to Putney, Vermont, where his father, John Sr., became an executive at the Putney School, which Caldwell, Jr. attended. The school did not offer basketball, his sport of choice, so Caldwell took up skiing.

As a student, he helped equip the Putney cross-country team with hand-me-down gear and led them to a second-place finish in the Vermont state championships. He went on to race for Dartmouth College, where he competed in four events: cross-country, ski jumping, downhill and slalom. Caldwell graduated in 1950. Two years later, he competed in the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics.

That was the start of his Olympic career. From 1960 to 1984, Caldwell helped coach the U.S. Nordic team at five Winter Games, two as head coach. At the 1976 Innsbruck Games, Bill Koch—a former student of Caldwell’s at Putney—became the first American to win a medal (silver) in cross-country skiing. Koch acknowledged Caldwell as a key mentor in his development as a cross-country competitor.

A tireless coach and advocate for Nordic skiing, Caldwell invited Swedish and Norwegian women throughout the 1960s and ’70s to compete in cross-country races in the U.S., both to help promote the sport and to have U.S. racers gain experience against elite competition. In 1995, he co-founded the New England Nordic Ski Association.

Perhaps Caldwell’s most enduring influence on the sport was writing The Cross-Country Ski Book, first published in 1964, and updated repeatedly. Ahead of its time, the book provided a holistic guide to the sport, with coverage of technique, gear, fitness, waxing and clothing. The book also addressed Nordic skiing for adaptive skiers and kids. It’s still considered the English-language bible of cross-country skiing.