But the fact is that the skiing star almost missed out on those magic hands. Klæbo actually said no thank you the first time Stowe offered to help.

“We heard that she had worked in the NBA, and I said, ‘Fine, good for you,’” Klæbo said in a previous interview with fasterskier.com.

Initially, both the skier and his manager-dad Haakon declined help from the renowned physiotherapist.

“Many people wanted to help at that time,” Klæbo said, who had just started a treatment program back home in Norway.

The turning point came when Klæbo’s team was having dinner at Stowe’s home, who by this time had more or less retired from her career as a physiotherapist in Midway, Utah, not far from the 2002 Olympic stadium Soldier Hollow.

Klæbo was struggling with a lingering hamstring injury and had been doing much of his training in Utah.

Read More: Klæbo’s Injury Worse Than Expected

During dinner, the conversation turned to the hamstring injury, and Klæbo showed his MRI scans. Before they left, Klæbo and Stowe went down to her treatment room for a quick examination.

Stowe has her treatment room at her own house, equipped with a hot tub, a cold pool, and a full treatment room with exercise equipment.

It took just one treatment in this room for Klæbo to lose his skepticism about Megan Stowe’s treatment methods.

“I was like, ‘Holy hell.’ I felt that this is what I’ve been missing in my career,” Klæbo later stated to fasterskier.com.

And we know how it turned out: 57-year-old Stowe possesses what are called magic hands, and she got Klæbo back into competitive shape. The results were overwhelming, and since then, the American has become more or less a regular fixture in Team Klæbo.

“I call them my Norwegian family and Johannes my little brother,” she says herself.

After this initial treatment, she has accompanied Johannes Høsflot Klæbo to Europe several times, and he has held several training camps in the area where Megan Stowe lives in Utah.

Megan Stowe found that Klæbo’s hamstring problem largely stemmed from a tight ankle combined with muscle imbalance between the chest and back. Together, they devised a routine to alleviate the issues.

“He had weakness in the broad back muscle and the rotator cuff (a muscle group in the shoulders). Due to all the forward body movements he makes,” Stowe explained in an interview with VG and nuanced:

“Meaning, he’s not weak at all, but he was relatively weak in that area compared to the rest of his body. Since he was so strong in the chest and arms, there was an imbalance in the body that could lead to overloading certain muscles.”

“By becoming stronger in the broad back muscle and the rotator cuff, in addition to opening up the chest and gaining more range in the shoulders, the chances of that happening are much less.”

When Klæbo returned at the end of the 2022 season for another week and a half in Utah, he was treated for six to seven hours each day. He typically started the day with an hour of physiotherapy, followed by rest, another session of treatment before dinner, and then sleep.

“It was 10 days of a lot of pain,” Klæbo said afterward.

Megan Stowe is known in sports circles in the USA, particularly for her manual therapy.

“Most physiotherapists going through school now learn to work with patients for 30 minutes to an hour,” Klæbo said. Stowe “works much deeper, and she works longer, in all sorts of areas.”

Megan Stowe is no stranger to treating elite athletes. She was a physiotherapist for many years for the stars of the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA basketball league. She is an avid cross-country skier herself, and she had heard that Klæbo had been training in Utah. Therefore, through friends, she offered to help.

An offer that Johannes Høsflot Klæbo almost missed out on.

Now, he says that Megan Stowe is one of his most important supporters.