Might as well jump: Olympian Bickner looking to soar after getting his start in the suburbs

Kevin Bickner makes the introduction to his unique, favorite sport sound so plain.

“Probably a similar story as a lot of kids. It was available to me,” he said.

After his parents, Tom and Maureen, took him skiing on more substantial upper Midwest slopes than could be found near their Wauconda home, a neighbor saw an ad for ski jumping at the Norge Ski Club in Fox River Grove.

“When we discovered there was a ski jumping club 20 minutes away from where we lived, I couldn’t believe it,” Bickner said.

Ski jumping: Straight down a hill then airborne a few hundred feet before landing.

Mess up one of those, and it might be immortalized as “the agony of defeat.”

Attending a competition at Norge, Bickner saw a sign offering lessons. As he said over the phone Wednesday, he was “all over it.” At 9 years old he started taking lessons.

“I enjoyed doing it a lot, it was some of my favorite parts about skiing, like hitting jumps. It was the perfect sport for me to find,” he said.

Now, 20 years later, Bickner is in his third Winter Olympics.

At the Milan Cortina Games he’ll compete Monday on Normal Hill (a 107-meter elevation) and Feb. 14 on Large Hill (141 meters) at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium. It’s a venue Bickner first visited at 18 for the junior world championships.

Depending on his results in those two events, Bickner may also be a part of the United States effort on Tuesday for Mixed Team and on Feb. 16 with the Men’s Super Team.

Bickner immersed himself in ski jumping to the point that by 16, during his sophomore year at Wauconda High School, he had made the United States junior national team.

To facilitate his training, he and his parents and younger sister, Kailey, moved to Park City, Utah, a winter wonderland for outdoor athletes.

Bickner was named U.S. Ski & Snowboard 2016 ski jumping athlete of the year and competed in the 2017 and 2019 world championships.

He also has competed in more extreme ski flying competitions, soaring off a higher hill. On a 2017 jump in Norway, Bickner went 244.5 meters, the United States’ record.

“It’s pretty insane,” he said.

Because the focus of his sport was in Europe — it originated in Norway — as he continued to compete, Bickner spent much of his time living first in Slovenia and now in Lillehammer, Norway, where he said the U.S. team is based.

That got to be a little insane, too.

Tiring of living abroad and seeing his results diminish, such as a drop from 18th on the normal hill at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games to 43rd in Beijing, following the 2022 Winter Olympics, Bickner left the sport at age 25.

“I left because I was really burned out,” he said. “I was not enjoying it anymore, my results were suffering. I just didn’t see a reason to continue doing it and I wanted to move on with other things in my life.

“So that’s what I did — I left and I went and lived a normal life and, frankly, I really enjoyed doing it.”

One thing kept rattling around in the back of Bickner’s mind: “I never really felt like I reached my true potential in the sport.”

Nagged by regret, implored by friends and coaches to return, and encouraged by a partnership between the Team USA and Norwegian ski jumping programs, Bickner’s retirement proved short-lived. And his results have improved.

Over the 2024-25 season he attained his highest World Cup ranking, 28th, and in 2025 Bickner earned his first top-10 finish in a World Cup event.

Entering Milan Cortina, his last two seasons have been his most successful.

“Since I came back to the sport things have been really working out,” he said Wednesday after a fitting for his new Olympic ski jumping suit. “I feel like my jumping is at as high of a level as it’s ever been. I’m in a much better place than I was four years ago when I left the sport.”

A veteran familiar with the Predazzo facility, on a little heater, Bickner believes another top-10 finish is a realistic goal.

“I would say that I just want to do better than I’ve done in the past,” he said.

At 29 he’s an ambassador of a sport that has fascinated him since childhood.

“It’s a really great thing to get involved in,” Bickner said, “and if you don’t want to participate in it, it’s a really cool thing to watch that has a regular circuit that happens every year, just like any other sport has a season.

“I just want people to be more aware of ski jumping.”