New medal events cause qualifying crunch for US Olympic ski team

When the International Olympic Committee voted to add 12 new medal events to the Winter Games a few years ago, it aimed to attract younger spectators, but it also made qualifying for Sochi even more brutal in some sports.

Three new events in biathlon, luge and figure skating are variations of existing ones, which gives each set of athletes one more shot at winning a medal. Snowboarding added four new events, but half of all snowboarding events involve racing, so the potential for an athlete to vie for more than one medal is greater.

But two new events each for men and women in freestyle skiing, which includes an exceptionally diverse hodgepodge of disciplines, are putting a huge squeeze for spots on the U.S. team, whose athletes rarely compete in multiple events because of the vastly different skills they require. Aerials is predominantly gymnastic, ski cross is pure racing, and moguls mirrors regular skiing. The new events — ski halfpipe is an offshoot of skateboarding, and ski slopestyle entails linking tricks down the length of a run. 

The added events did not come with a proportional increase in skiers allowed on a team. In the 2010 Winter Olympics, there were six events and 18 spots on the team. This year, there are 10 events and 26 spots, and the U.S. ski team must figure out how to best divvy up its talent in order to win the most medals in Sochi. It is a complicated and daunting task.

In each of the 10 events, no more than four athletes from the same nation may compete. And within a team of 26, no more than 14 members may be men, and no more than 14 may be women.

At this point, many U.S. freestyle skiers still have no idea whether they’ll be in Sochi, even though the games are three weeks away and women’s moguls is one of the first events on the schedule.

The freestyle team is expected to be nominated on Tuesday, and this weekend is crucial. It marks the last chance for skiers to meet the team’s purely objective qualifying standard, which is to get on the podium (finish in the top three) in at least two qualifying events. If they fail, then their Olympic fates will be entirely up to a five-member selection panel. 

As of Thursday evening, only eight skiers had met the standard. The window is closing fast. 

“It’s really difficult this time,” said Bryon Wilson, who made the 2010 Olympic team and earned a bronze medal in moguls. “I’ve had a slow start.”

His younger brother, Bradley Wilson, is also competing for a coveted berth in moguls for Sochi, and already, Bradley Wilson is closer to earning it. The Wilsons have one last chance to seize a spot this weekend in Canada, while skiers in other disciplines are scattered from New York to Utah to France to claim their spots.

“I’ve never seen more pressure on human beings in my life,” said Craig Manning, a mental-strength coach for several U.S. freestyle skiers who has also worked with athletes in the NFL, the NBA, major league Baseball and professional tennis.

“I don’t know if the margin for error has ever been this small, this acute,” he said. “The slightest bit of impurity of thought can cost you a podium. It can cost you an opportunity.”

It was much simpler to predict who would make the U.S. team 20 years ago, when freestyle skiing made its official Olympic debut in Lillehammer, Norway, and moguls and aerials were the only events.

“You knew how many spots were available,” said Trace Worthington, a 1994 Olympian. “You just had to be the top-ranked American by the deadline. When you landed your final jump, you saw your score, and you knew.”

Now even if athletes earn the requisite podium placements to qualify, not everyone has an equal chance to qualify automatically. In addition to the U.S. criteria, there are quotas for each discipline.

In a 14-page document outlining its qualifying procedure, the U.S. ski team has earmarked at least three men’s and three women’s berths each for moguls, halfpipe and slopestyle (accounting for 18 spots), awarding the spots to athletes who meet the two-podium minimum this season. But only one spot per gender would be set aside for aerials — which featured four men and four women in Vancouver. And there would be only one spot in ski cross, regardless of gender. (There were two in Vancouver, both men.)

“I don’t even see how you could compare sports,” said John Teller, last year’s bronze medalist at the ski cross world championships. On Friday, he won the final U.S. qualifier in France, but it was his only top-three finish this season. “We’re a completely different sport that is timed, not judged.”

In addition, there are five berths that the U.S. team hasn’t specified for any discipline. This means athletes in one discipline are, in effect, competing for better results than their teammates’ in other disciplines in hopes of claiming one of the unassigned spots.

The U.S. ski team would not comment on discretionary picks or speculate on how the rest of the berths would be allocated, but the effect is clear.

The interdisciplinary competition on top of the competition within each event “makes it tough, especially when we have a strong team across the board,” said Patrick Deneen, the 2009 moguls world champion. He became the eighth freestyle skier to meet the two-podium criterion Wednesday in Lake Placid, N.Y.

The uncertainty can also affect strategy, consciously or not. 

Teller, whose results had been disappointing until Friday’s victory, said Sochi “has been on the back of my mind. The Olympics have been a lifelong dream.” He was not sure if the pressure was to blame. He has been largely self-financed this year, which made the string of subpar results sting all the more. 

McRae Williams tentatively ranks third in men’s ski slopestyle among Americans after three qualifying events. He still needs two podium results in the two remaining qualifiers to clinch a berth, unless other Americans match the feat and force a tiebreaker that requires even more hairsplitting mathematical jujitsu.

Williams said that the criterion is “fair” but that it was “pretty heated” last weekend in Breckenridge, Colo., where the ski slopestyle event was interrupted by bad weather. The final round was canceled, and the results from the qualifying rounds were deemed official, even though athletes don’t really aspire to win qualifying rounds because the top 16 advance to the final.

Williams didn’t make the cut for the final that never happened, but several of his friends did. Bobby Brown got the coveted victory for winning the qualifying runs, meaning Brown (the 2010 Winter X Games gold medalist) is halfway to meeting the objective criterion for Sochi.

Even when events run as planned, Williams said, “it’s a constant battle. It’s more of a mind game, almost, than a talent competition. It’s about who’s in the right mind-set and who’s making the right choices.”

“For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking to an athlete every spare minute there is, pretty much, trying to help them keep their minds dialed in,” said Manning, who did not disclose which freestyle athletes he works with. “It’s microscopic adjustments.

“People don’t see how much mental preparation is happening. For every two physical skills they’re working on, they’re working on one mental — at least. They’re dealing with it really well. I don’t think people have any idea how tough these athletes are.”