Freestyle Skiing - Part A - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book, “Winter Olympics:  An Insider’s Guide to the Legends, the Lore, and the Games”, Vancouver Edition, copyright 2008 by Ron C. Judd)

When your middle name is “Big Air”, you might as well go with the big air.

That’s what Jonny “Big Air” Moseley ultimately decided that day in Park City, standing at the top of a sprawling bump run on a glorious Utah day, with the whole world looking on.

For weeks, Moseley, a Puerto Rican native, and the defending gold medalist in moguls – an event he’d won in Nagano, Japan in 1998 by completing a skateboard-inspired 360 mute grab, which includes grasping one ski and staring, while briefly suspended in midair, at the adoring crowd – had faced an internal dilemma:  Should he go with what he knew would win, or follow his heart and let it all out?

Remaining, he believed, true to the sport of freestyle skiing, where competitors are not just athletes, but also innovators and entertainers – artists, if you’re disposed to use that word so freely – Moseley had been working on expanding his art form.

A bit of background will help here.  Moguls skiers bop down a steep hill of large snow bumps before taking flight, literally, off two ski jumps.  Although speeds vary among competitors, most skiers run the bumps in a very similar fashion.  It’s your time in the air on those two mandatory jumps that allows you to spread your wings and separate yourself from the flock.

In a sport where the judges’ impressions account for 70 percent of your score, it’s that air time that puts you in the big time.

Moseley’s new trick, which he’d dubbed the “dinner roll”, was a 720-degree roll, with one roll completed on the horizontal axis and the other on the vertical.  When he did it, his rolling body was laid out sideways as it sailed, seemingly in slow motion, down the mountain.  He had developed the trick for the 1999 X Games, but had only now begun to perfect it to the point that he could complete the roll more often than not.

However, the few times that Moseley, then 26, actually landed the trick in competition, judges didn’t like it.  They considered it dangerous, and some officials called it illegal.  Moguls, unlike the more free-form aerials skiing, another freestyle pursuit, is a right-side-up sport.  Your skis are never supposed to go above your head, and on Moseley’s dinner roll, they come as close to that as they can come.

Weeks before the Salt Lake Games, Moseley, in his final attempt to qualify to compete in Salt Lake, finally relented and played it safe.  He left the dinner roll in the breadbox and performed more traditional jumps, winning the contest and earning a spot on the Olympic team.

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.