'Changed my life': Montana State's Justine Lamontagne becomes Olympian, national champion as senior

Take a moment to consider how fast two seconds pass.

If you read that last sentence aloud, you might be just over two seconds. It’s not a lot of time.

But consider, for instance, Justine Lamontagne’s national championship-winning slalom runs on March 13 at the NCAA Skiing Championships in Park City, Utah.

The Montana State senior’s first run clocked in at 44.30 seconds, 1.69 seconds faster than any other competitor. Her second run was 49.41 seconds — the seventh-fastest of the second round. Her combined time of 1 minute, 33.71 seconds earned her the title. That mark was 1.99 seconds faster than Denver’s Mia Hunt (1:35.70). Scroll down the results list another two seconds from second place and one finds the 15th-place finisher.

In this realm, two seconds is an enormous amount of time.

At the 2025 championships, for more context, the NCAA women’s slalom champion had a winning margin of .06 seconds. Lamontagne was fourth overall, .12 seconds back of the winner. Two seconds back from the leader would have been 17th place.

In a sport with so little room for error, Lamontagne separated herself so thoroughly from her competition at the 2026 championships that her winning margin can confidently be called a blowout.

Lamontagne’s slalom title only added to her special winter. She spent most of February in Italy, representing her native Canada at the Milano Cortina Olympics, before starting her final college season late and qualifying for NCAAs in just under three weeks.

Once she reached Utah, she won the women’s giant slalom title (by 1.62 seconds) on March 11 to become MSU’s second women’s national champion and then followed two days later with the slalom title, making her the first Bobcat and the seventh woman from any school to win two championships in the same year.

“I think it proves to me I put my best skiing out there, especially the first runs,” Lamontagne said of her winning margins. “I feel like it was just solid skiing — no doubt and I just went for it. It's cool to see that I was able to ski how I can ski in training, which is sometimes hard in races, like when there's the stress and added pressure.”

Judging by results alone, Lamontagne handled the enormity of the moment with ease. Perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising for MSU’s most-decorated women’s skier. With her two national championships, Lamontagne became the school’s all-time leader with six All-America honors.

“I feel like it's to believe in yourself,” Lamontagne said of what she’s learned throughout her career. “It's kind of cliche, but (believe in yourself) and have fun. I feel like it's been both. It's trying to have fun and also work super hard. I feel like that's what college racing is about.”

‘One decision that could make such a difference’

As she looks back on her path, Lamontagne, 23, sees her choice to attend Montana State as the springboard to her success.

After graduating from high school in Saint-Ferreol-les-Neiges at age 16 (standard in the Quebec province), Lamontagne attended a cégep — a general or professional college, “between high school and a university,” she said — for a few years, where she focused her studies on the natural sciences. Her interest in environmental engineering grew out of those classes, and when she learned of the academic offerings at MSU, she thought it could be a good fit with her skiing as well.

Lamontagne had friends speak highly of MSU, and she trusted their feedback. She never took a visit to campus to see it for herself.

“Just ended up in August here,” she said.

At the end of her freshman season in 2023, Lamontagne earned the first two All-America honors of her career. She placed sixth (second team All-America) in the women’s slalom at the NCAA Championships, held in Lake Placid, New York, and third (first team) in the giant slalom.

In 2024, she placed 12th in giant slalom and 16th in slalom at the NCAA Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As a junior, competing in Hanover, New Hampshire, Lamontagne added two more first team All-America finishes to her name. In addition to the fourth-place finish in slalom, she was the giant slalom runner-up by 0.65 seconds.

All of that set the stage for her whirlwind of a senior season.

“Looking back at my freshman year, there’s so much I've learned (since then),” Lamontagne said. “I think I was pretty good at skiing, but I learned so much along the way what it takes to maintain that level.”

So, how about that decision to attend Montana State without ever seeing Bozeman first? How’d that work out?

“Pretty well,” she said with a small smile. “It’s crazy. Just one decision that could make such a difference. It definitely changed my life.”

‘I want more’

Lamontagne credits her development at Montana State for helping her earn opportunities with the Canadian national team. To prepare for such a long racing season, she crisscrossed the globe with the Canadian team to find snow.

She and her teammates were in France in June and went to Argentina in September. They settled in Italy for a training camp before the first World Cup race in Austria in October and then bounced around to Colorado in November and Canada and Austria again in December. January included travel to Slovenia and Canada — for North American Cup races — and more World Cup races in Italy and the Czech Republic.

Lamontagne accumulated enough points through all of those events to qualify for the Olympics, further delaying the start to her final collegiate season.

“(MSU head Alpine coach Kris Shampeny) has always been so supportive of me going and racing Nor-Ams to make criteria and having the opportunity to go race for Canada,” Lamontagne said, “and always allowing me to miss college races and pursue that dream.”

Lamontagne stayed in the Olympic Village for six days as part of her two-and-a-half week stay in Italy. Coming from a family of skiers — her mom is a ski instructor and her father and siblings all ski race — it was “really special” to share the Olympic experience with them, Lamontagne said.

One of her fondest memories of being in Italy is seeing all members of her family in red Canadian gear and matching hats that one of her sisters made.

Competing only in the giant slalom, Lamontagne had the 32nd-fastest first run (1:06.34) of 61 finishers followed by the 27th-fastest second run (1:11.48). Her combined time of 2:17.82 gave her 28th place, 4.32 seconds behind gold medalist Federica Brignone of Italy.

While she called her time at the Olympics “super fun,” Lamontagne also hopes she got a glimpse of her future.

“Racing at the highest level, I was like, ‘OK, I want more,’” she said. “It's something I want to do in the future years.”

‘It’s always been two’

Upon returning to the United States, Lamontagne had just under three weeks to qualify for NCAAs. At the same time, she had to be carefully “managing my energy” after such a long racing season already.

“Transitioning from the Olympics to coming to college, it was, ‘I don't need to ski more,’” she said. “I need to be 100% when I do. So it's resting, going to class and doing my stuff so that stress is not there on race day.”

On Feb. 22, one week after competing in the Olympics, Lamontagne placed fifth in the giant slalom at the Utah Invitational in Park City. The next day, as part of the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association Alpine Qualifier event also in Park City, she again placed fifth in the GS.

“(There was) a little bit of pressure, because I was like, ‘I want to be at NCAAs,’” Lamontagne said. “I was definitely a little bit more nervous for the first two races. And then once I had two top-fives, I was like, ‘OK, now it's time to just go for wins.’”

Fifth would end up being her lowest placing of the season. She placed second on Feb. 24 in the slalom at the Utah Invitational and followed up by winning the RMISA slalom title and placing second in the RMISA giant slalom on Feb. 27 and 28 at Bridger Bowl — qualifying for NCAAs with ease.

When she reached Utah again for the NCAAs — which were originally scheduled for Bozeman but had to be relocated to do an unprecedented lack of snow — Lamontagne sought to manage her nerves, finding confidence in her previous NCAA performances and the fact that she was newly an Olympian.

On March 11, in the giant slalom, she put down a run of 1:02.97 to lead the field by 1.35 seconds. She followed with the eighth-fastest second run (1:01.01) to become a national champion.

Two days later, instead of being satisfied with one title, Lamontagne amped herself up by thinking, “Why not in slalom?” She wanted to help her team the best she could — winning another championship and earning the most amount of points — but she also wanted to be greedy.

“In the back of my mind, it's always been two,” she said.

Lamontagne smoked the field with her first slalom run of 44.30 seconds. Shampeny said she took advantage of her early bib draws (determined by regular-season rankings) and good snow conditions in both events.

“It just showed a different level of skiing that Justine has compared to the rest of the field on those first runs, to put the time gap she did on the other athletes,” Shampeny said. “It was probably one of the best runs of slalom I've seen in a long time out of an athlete, even on the World Cup. I was talking to a couple other coaches, ‘That looked like a top-15 World Cup run to me when she came down.’”

As the leader, Lamontagne had the final second run, meaning she couldn’t follow the live results from the top of the hill. When she finally reached the bottom after her second run, she learned that teammates Tea Kiesel (fourth) and Lily Sewell (10th) had earned First- and Second-Team All-America honors. And as for herself, she was again a national champion.

“I feel like it's a good way to end my senior year,” Lamontagne said. “It was really awesome to do that my last race.”

‘Being on the mountain’

Lamontagne tried many other sports growing up, and for a time she considered her main sport to be rugby. She played that game all the way up until she committed to MSU for skiing.

Skiing won her heart, though, because of all the memories she has with her family and friends in the snow. This sport fulfills her the most.

“Being on the mountain, going to Bridger Bowl on a powder day is so fun,” she said. “Being outside, being in the mountains, kept me in it.”

One aspect of her disciplines, compared to her Nordic-racing teammates, that she appreciates most is that her events are decided in the blink of an eye.

“It’s hard because it's so quick, and something can happen so quickly and you don't even notice,” she said. “Sometimes I kind of say I'm blacking out when I go do my race because there's so much happening in that minute. It's really hard to take everything in. Sometimes I kind of feel like I forgot what happened.”

Individual races may be difficult to replay in her mind, but her final winter as a Bobcat will certainly be unforgettable.