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The Total Package:
Jonny Moseley

Jonny Moseley is an Olympic gold medallist in moguls. He describes winning the gold in 1998 as the highlight of his career. Jonny’s finished competing professionally, but he still has a lot to say about the sport of skiing, the evolution of his tricks and the Olympics.

Have you been watching any of this year’s games?

Yeah.

Do you have a favorite summer event?

I’m totally into the gymnastics and trampoline. Those are my favorite [events].

You skied in ’98 and 2002. What was the experience like of living in the Olympic Village?

I don’t really have any experience in the Olympic village. I didn’t really stay in the Olympic Village in Nagano. I only stayed there for one or two nights. I stayed one night at the one in Salt Lake. We always stayed near our event site. I don’t really have any experience. The first year, I didn’t stay in it very much. I left right after I won. It’s fun; it’s a good party.

Did you just come in to compete and then go home?

I did.

Being an athlete at the Games, do you get a lot of perks?

Being an Olympic athlete, you get a lot of perks; before and after. You get a lot of stuff. I’ve always gotten a lot of stuff because I’ve been sponsored for many years by companies. At the games itself, not as many [perks] as you’d think.

Are you planning on being in Italy for 2006?

No, I don’t plan on being in Italy

Do you have a favorite place to ski?

Yeah, Squaw Valley.

What’s been your scariest moment on skis?

I crashed one time in Alaska

Was it out in the wilderness?

Yeah, on a big, steep mountain.

Did you break anything?

No injury, it just scared me.

Who’s your idol?

Brad Holmes, my brother; Rick and Jesse.

Growing up, was your family always into skiing?

We were all skier. My brothers were competitive skiers. I thought they were pretty cool.

What projects outside of skiing are you working on?

I’ve got a cement wall going in on the side of my house [laughs]. That’s one project. I’m working on some undergraduate college education right now.

As a student, how do you fit in your training time?

It’s easy. I don’t train anymore.

Are you done?

Yeah [laughs].

Do you go out on the slopes for fun?

I ski all the time.

Do you have a favorite memory from your career?

The Olympics were the highlight. Winning the Olympics in ’98 was the biggest thing ever for me.

Did you know going into the Olympics that you had it in you to win?

Actually, I did. There was a point at which I knew it was mine to lose. I definitely had the potential to win it, it was just a question of focusing and putting it together. I knew I was at a level where I was a contender. It’s like, sometimes when you watch the gymnasts. Some people are good gymnasts, but they may not even have the repertoire of tricks. They might be at the Olympics, but they might not have a repertoire of tricks that has the highest degree of difficulty that you have to consider being a real contender for winning. Going into ’98, I knew that I was one of three or four people that had everything it takes to win. It was just a matter of doing it.

Did having this confidence come from years of practice?

It was all practice, focused practice. I competed on World Cup [skiing] for years; I lost and won. It was a process of building up skills and knowing how to win, and what it takes to win. I had some background skills that gave me an edge, mainly my background in aerial skiing; things that a lot of people didn’t have in my sport.

Before Nagano, you started working on the 360. How long of a process was that?

I’ve been doing 360s since I was really small, when I was a kid. Incorporating the 360 with the Mute Grab…once I figured that trick out, it wasn’t really hard for me to do. The process of incorporating it into a mogul run was the part that took a long time. It’s not like [incorporating the trick] was intentional, it just happened. It corresponded with the rest of the sport, where the sport was going. I just had the foresight to use it and use it well. What took me awhile to adapt into my program was The Dinner Roll. That took me a lot longer than I expected, to take it from an X-Games platform. I developed that trick for the X-Games, back in ’99. I transitioned [The Dinner Roll] from a big jump they have at the X-Games, into the mogul field. It took a lot longer than I thought. It really was quite painful. I took a lot of crashes and knocked myself out. It got to a point where I didn’t think [The Dinner Roll] was even going to be possible, until I ended up tweaking the trick and making it work. That was a long process. The 360-Mute Grab was not a long process. Once I figured out [how] to do it, it was pretty easy. Other guys were doing it too, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The other guys that were doing it just weren’t very good mogul skiers. They weren’t as good [mogul skiers].

Do you have any advice that you would like to give to skiers just starting out?

There’s no skipping levels. You need to learn all the different aspects of skiing and jumping, and aerials, and everything. You can’t expect to get into it and not really learn all aspects of [skiing]. You can’t be heavy on one discipline and not on the others. In order to be a really good skier, you gotta learn all the different disciplines and aspects.

Is there a brotherhood among skiers?

I think there’s a brotherhood. There’s definitely a unity. People who do certain sports like skiing have more appreciation for it, and feel like a lot of people don’t understand it as well. I think definitely among freestyle skiers, there’s a certain brotherhood. Unless you’ve really done it and done some of the stuff, you don’t know as much as you think about it.

What do you feel drives that brotherhood?

I think there’s a certain amount of time involved in getting to a certain level in the sport. There’s a process of hanging out at the same places, and going through some of the same motions that makes people come together. I think that’s common amongst all sports really.

Describe yourself in three words.

Impatient, slightly bipolar, pensive.

What do you want Jonny Mosley to be remembered for?

I’d like to be seen as an engineer of what I do. An engineer of not only the sport part of it, but of my career. {I want] someone to look back and say, “He was good at putting together the whole package. From the skills on the slopes, to the way he carries himself in life.” [I want to be seen as] someone who was good at the process. A process-engineer.

For more info on Jonny, check out his website: www.jonnymosley.com