What is it like to be on the U.S. Ski Team?

The U.S. Ski team sometimes has a reputation for being a bunch of self interested, spoiled, egotistical knuckleheads.

This is certainly what I thought of the team back when I first started to encounter its members as a junior racer. The reality of course is far from that.

The Ski Team (is it egotistical that I capitalized it?) is made up of a bunch of dedicated, hard working, mostly humble knuckleheads who love to ski and absolutely love to compete. Especially compete, even when it’s uncalled for. One recent competition was to see who could rapidly nibble down an entire breadstick at dinner in the least amount of time (bonus points for highest number of bites per inch). Ted Ligety won that battle as I recall.

Anyway, I never thought ski teamers knew how good they really had it. This harsh judgment I once made was coupled with a promise that if I were to ever find myself in that same position, I would relish each and every day. Well as luck (and lots of squats) would have it, I now get to wear that fancy Spyder coat. And luckier still, I get to write about the whole shebang via this here blog. I guess anything is possible with enough squats/trips to the thesaurus.

On a typical day, I get to ski in some of the most beautiful places in the world on equipment that masters racers would literally kill for.

My skis are waxed and tuned every night by a factory rep named Bernie (who also happens to be my favorite unofficial coach. Ironically he smokes a pack a day but never blows smoke up my ass). I run gates set and pulled by coaches who also manage to shoot video, set up timing, fix the timing when it invariably stops working, replace broken gates, carry coats, slip the ruts, yell at me for not drinking that water bottle they brought to the hill, and oh yeah, actually coach.
After a morning of gate training and free skiing, it’s lunch, followed by nothing, then dryland (knock down, drag out competition in some form), followed by nothing, then dinner, followed by nothing.

There’s a lot of open space on the schedule. Keep in mind this is just a typical day, a good day among lots of good days. A great day is far beyond. Say, exceeding my expectations on race day, or skiing run after run of fresh powder because the local Austrians prefer to stay on the groomers, or driving that rental car far up that river in New Zealand (I still smile thinking of that day).

All the little things are taken care of. You would think this creates an environment where the athlete is left to focus solely on racing. Not true, my coaches still remind me sometimes, “Jim, don’t think, don’t worry, just race.”

So in the end I don’t have to worry about anything at all (though I still get nervous about racing, but don’t tell anyone). This leaves me with lots of spare time to ponder how good I have it, but not right now, because I have to go DOMINATE Erik Schlopy in ping-pong…