When I got to know @NathanIkonCrumpton many years ago, he was a college graduate who was thinking about what he would do next. Imagine my surprise then a decade later when I saw Nic, as many of his friends know him, on the cover of The New York Times and Sports Illustrated websites, an international sensation competing in the Olympics. In a way I wasn’t surprised though, he always struck me as a person destined for big things.
J.E.: What was your life like growing up as a global citizen?
N.I.C.: Well, I was born in Kenya and spent most of my childhood growing up in sub Saharan Africa. There was also a three year tour in Switzerland sandwiched in there as well before mostly settling in the US for high school. And looking back, it was a fantastic experience. I didn't know any better at the time but it was a rare opportunity to live in a variety of countries amidst a variety of cultures, languages, and ethnic groups. I suppose that was a fitting upbringing as I come from my own ethnic and racial mix, with English and French heritage on one parent's side, and Chinese and Polynesian on the other.
N.I.C.: So far I've been lucky to live a cosmopolitan life, in the traditional, Latin sense of the word. Hawaii is a bit of a spiritual home for me, given that I never had a consistent home for more than 3 years at a time growing up. I have more known relatives there than anywhere else, and it makes for a great place for family reunions! Utah was where I moved to in 2012 to train for skeleton. There are only two tracks in the USA for skeleton, with one in Lake Placid, NY and the other in Park City, UT. Utah was the better of the two options, particularly given my affinity for dramatic natural landscapes.
J.E.: You had a wild Olympic journey.
N.I.C.: I could write a book on that 11 year journey and how improbable it all was. I started skeleton racing at age 25, after college and after I had already wrapped up my career as an NCAA D1 athlete at Princeton, where I was a jumper and short sprinter on the track team. But I saw skeleton on TV at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver and thought it was the coolest sport I had ever seen. Head first ice sliding at 90mph? I had to give it a try. So in 2011, I tried it out and loved the thrill - it’s a unique sensation unlike anything else. I've met a former fighter pilot who flew at supersonic speeds and who also completed at skeleton school, and he said that supersonic flight while buzzing the earth at 500 feet above ground doesn't hold a candle to how fast skeleton feels simply because of how close a skeleton racer's face is to the ice.
N.I.C.: My track and field background and some good genetics made pushing the skeleton sled - a critical component of a race - come quite easily to me. But learning how to control a fast moving sled while sliding on ice on geometric planes that were both parallel and orthogonal to the ground took about half a decade to develop. It's an incredibly niche and esoteric physical skill, and for a few years it was unclear if I would ever develop it adequately to compete at a world class level.
N.I.C.: But I persisted. And even after being cut from the US team and repeatedly denied the racing positions I had outright earned, I loved the sport enough to seek out my own coach and my own engineering team, and stubbornly soldier on. And by 2016, at the World Championships in Austria, I finished as the #1 American and #8 skeleton racer in the world. I had a handful of other top 10 world cup finishes and everything was on track to qualify for the 2018 Olympics until I herniated a disc in my back the week before the US National team trials during that Olympic season. And I thought my Olympic dream was dashed.
N.I.C.: Nonetheless, I persisted again, and after making a switch to American Samoa in 2019 following a bitter arbitration battle and fallout with USA Bobsled Skeleton - which, though unwelcomed at the time, ultimately allowed me far more flexibility and financial support to compete - I qualified for the Olympics in Beijing in 2022. And as a bonus, I qualified for the final heat of the Olympics, and beat all my former US teammates in both the international rankings and at the Olympic Games. It was sweet vindication for me, and a rather embarrassing outcome for Team USA, who lost to little old Team American Samoa operating on a comparatively tiny budget!
J.E.: Tell us Specifically about this opening ceremony moment and crashing the global internet. Coincidence? Luck? Or was this the ultimate marketing move. You made yourself the global talk of the town overnight, this is usually reserved for world leaders, etc.
N.I.C.: It was pretty surreal. Luckily I had a great team behind me, including our chief of Olympic mission Ryan Leong and his wife Bonnie who organized the traditional Polynesian outfit for me to wear. I knew that shirtless Olympians had attracted a lot of (and perhaps unwarranted?) attention in the past, and I figured it could happen again. Walking out in -5C weather at the opening ceremony without a top on and slathered in baby oil just added to the hoopla. It was an intense few weeks of interview requests, Olympic stardom, and global notoriety, but thankfully things have returned to normal.
J.E. Then you wrote a book.
N.I.C.: It's a chonker! Over 550 pages of licentiousness and nerdiness. It's a nonfiction novel called "Alpha Status," available on Amazon, and chronicles the wild life of a New York hedge fund manager who is obsessed with making money and sleeping with women, often by using aggressive and ethically questionable tactics. I like to think of it as a spiritual mix of The Economist and 50 Shades of Grey.
J.E.: You are also a photographer right?
N.I.C.: Photography is more than a hobby but less than a full time profession. It's just something that I enjoy doing, and make some side money with it, usually by selling limited edition or commissioned pieces to well-heeled people with extra wall space. Fine art nature prints of landscapes are one of my favorite things to produce, but I also enjoy pushing the envelope with some supra-realistic portraiture and scenery, including blending multiple exposures into a single image. Here’s a draft of a piece I'm working on that I created on this trip to NYC.
J.E.: What’s next for you?
N.I.C.: I'm touring around the US for the next few months, giving corporate keynote addresses and speaking at high schools. Inspiring sales staff, corporate executives, and America's next generation is my current endeavor. After that, we will see! I would like to keep running for American Samoa, and see if I can qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics in track and field. But that will take some extra sponsorships or some sort of job since I've wrapped up my skeleton racing career. I've been told I could command a decent stud price for my sperm if I wanted to sell that, but I'm exploring some other options first.