Bode Miller

this year, so it's it's a lot. I mean, it's not it's not what it used to be. But yeah, it's a lot of skiing. Okay, do you still enjoy it as much? As much? As pretty subjective? But I enjoy it a lot. I enjoy going with my kids and just parting around. I can ski with with anybody and have a good time. I think more or less I liked outside. I would be a really good golf caddy. Um. I I golf a lot, and I could give two ships about hitting the ball. I just like being outside

and walking around. So I think as a caddy, i'd carry the bag and kid give advice and um enjoy it.

Probably three times more than I enjoy golf, but um, yeah, I still you know, the other day we had a little powder and I and I ran a couple of steep shoots with a good young friend of mine who's I've known since he was born, um since he's twenty years younger than me, and my older sister's best friend's kid, and it was there was a unique pleasure that I don't know that I've ever really felt before seeing a kid who I knew from when he was born and I was a huge influence on his life being that

We're from the same town and watching him, uh, you know, just kill these shoots at at Yellowstone and Big Sky, and um, there's definitely a special pleasure of that, but I enjoy just all of it about skiing. Now, I certainly skied Big s guy. What shoots did you ski?

In this case, we were actually we hiked were way over on the Dakota side, so the side that faces kind of the south, and and uh we we rode up Dakota, we rode up um Shed Horn, and we hiked up a little bit and then we traversed far to the backside kind of the outskirts of what big sky, uh limits are, and we we ran a couple of shoots that kind of face towards I guess the East. Um, I don't know if they even have names over there.

I don't know that anybody really gets to him because you have to go off the tram and ski down that kind of back ridge and then drop into the Dakota Bowl. But that that wasn't the better stuff. Honestly.

The better stuff was in y c Um just off of the shoulder there, and we we went over to there's Pinnacle and Corner Pocket and they're just you know, they're short and easy, which is perfect for me because my I'm not as fit as I once was, so it's nice that I'm not doing four thousand continuous vertical, But um, it was. It was. It was awesome to watch somebody who had known since they were a kid ski and a lot of ways better than I was. Now.

I've certainly skied a ton, not as much to you, but at this point in time, unless it's a really stormy day, which I enjoy, I find it much more enjoyable if I'm with somebody. Is that also your experience? I like both, honestly, I think for me I'm not a I'm not a meditative person um in terms of sitting still and being quiet, but skiing gives me that, and it did when I was young, so I was really kind of born into it. I you know, skied at Cannon my formative years. Cannon On and I skied

every day. The mountain was open for three years, and there you'd routinely on a on a minus fifteen or minus twenty day blow and you'd have four or five people on the whole mountain. So I was riding the chairlift and then the PbD chairs seventeen and it's um, you know, the Hong Kong share was twelve minutes. So I had these intermittent blocks between active action where I'm you know, trying to ski of like totally serene silence and just looking at nature. And that was my aitation.

So I think I I revert back to that really easily. So for me, skiing alone is different, I think than a lot of people. But like I said, that was a unique opportunity. The other day of skia, Shamus was really I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did because it was disproportionate to just a good conversation on the chairlift. I really enjoyed the actual skiing and watching him ski now skiing in that cold weather. I know, I still have toes at this very moment

that they're tingling and I'm sitting inside. To what degree if you've gotten frostbite, and to what degrees your body banged up from being on the circuit. M uh, you know, I'm actually not too banged up. My back is a bit so I wake up, you know, the stiff back in the morning. I'm not sure how much of that's my matches that you can see in the background here, or or just my you know, twenty five years of

racing at a high level. But um, but you know, I'm super thankful, remarkably lucky considering the crashes I took, in the longevity of my career in a really high risk, low margin, high consequence sport. But in terms of frost bite and stuff, I was I I was gifted with ray nods. I don't know if you know ray nods. I know what you're talking about, kind of a circulatory anomaly,

but done correctly and managed correctly. I think reynods is actually a gift for those of us who are cold weather athletes, because my hands get really stiff and white and uncoordinated really quickly. So like I can be in the pool in California and it's probably pools eighty degrees or eighty five degrees, and my heels will get all white, my hands get all white, and I can't really a

dexterity goes away. But they don't get frostbite ever. I mean, I've been in minus thirty five and I've had little little bits of frost bit on my knuckles from you know, certain things, but in general, compared to the people around me in Maine, when I was at boarding school or at Cannon, or even on the World Cup in certain instances with super tight boots and out there for you know, four or five hours at a time in minus thirty, um,

I was remarkably lucky. And I think that Ray nods actually because the cat larry reflects where everything trunches down somehow, it actually prevents prospect to some degree. Wow, that's pretty interesting. Okay, that's my own philosophy. You can. I don't want to get too scientific on you. No, plenty, Scientifically that's what's great. Okay, you have a new education initiative can you tell us about that? Yeah, I see l is in STU for

civic leadership. It comes really I'm I'm sort of the figurehead for it, although I've supported it for sixteen years now. They've been online for roughly twenty years. UM. The Spawn family has been stewards of Dwight Academy or Dwight Schools for um a hundred years, more than a hundred years, and the Dwight Schools have been around for a hundred and fifty or so years, so a huge legacy and incredible quality of school and educational purpose and drive and

also human development. Really, they they put kids in the top colleges around the world all the time. But more than that, they're developing leaderships, pills and uh community UM responsibility and accountability, all that stuff. So we intended to do brick and mortar academies these last few years, and we were probably on the ten yard line um of that, and then COVID struck and it just kind of really

throw a wrench and things. So we we launched the online initiative just to give parents a better opportunity to give their kids a high level education during this time where all these schools are even really fantastic schools are really struggling to transition to online learning for these kids, and um, you know, I see all have been doing it for twenty years, so they had a nineteen and a half year head start. So um it's been. It's been incredible to engage these kids. We have fifty years

so students in the Winter Sports Academy, and um it's been. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's part of my nature. My grandparents started a tennis camp that was heavily into tennis instruction, but also character development and community and um, you know, all the all the good qualities that we all hope we could you know, instill in our kids or and still in ourselves if we have the choice. Um so it's very natural to me. And uh it's been. That's been one of the really cool things that's come out

of this COVID debacle. Okay, what specifically is different about this academy. Uh So, it's an inverted blended curriculum, which means essentially each kid is obligated to somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half of live online classes per day. But during that time, this is the inverted part. The teacher actually just facilitates conversation between the kids.

There is no teacher trying to tell you about your homework or what you did or they just they let you apply that within your class to how you felt about it, what it applies to in real life. They facilitate that conversation the rest of your day. You you are held accountable to it, and you can self regulate manage your time. So, but they're all online courses that are essentially self instructed, So they have videos for kids who are more visual learners, they have audio and visual

for reading and all that. It's basically demonstrations of what it is and applications in real life. And it's like you you can't go to your parents and say I don't understand what I'm supposed to do. It literally spells it out. You have all these different drills. If kids struggle, puts them into a different group and they learned that way. So basically it allows kids to do about twice as much work and feel like they're doing half as much.

And then and the only obligation they have, which is an hour and a half all day, you know, is spent conversing with their friends with facilitation of a teacher and they come out of it with a you know, a degree that will get them into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, you know, Stanford, any of the big school So it's for me. I mean, it's one of those things I wish was around when I was there. And my element of that is then I do webinars weekly. We have

webinar Wednesdays. I talked to the kids, give them, you know, contextual stuff about what I did my career, what I wished i'd had, how I deal with stress, how I dealt with competition, um, you know, every every rething. And it's really just kind of a very family oriented kind of feel of just being a resource for them. Plus I give them training, um missions and and and affiliate training programs and products that they could test out and try that that I would have loved to have when

I was younger. I think would have really helped. And um yeah, you know, my my role in this, because we don't have a brick and mortar, is much less where I'd be doing programming and kind of day to day stuff. In this case, I'm just trying to layer in as much help as I can to a really kick ass let me be clear, is this only for ski racers or is it for the general public. No, so i CEL has been around for twenty years, so they've had students for twenty years doing this for dance,

for acting, for who knows what. But um, the Winter Sports Actually Academy was this year and we have kids who are snowboarders, Nordic alpine, um snowshoe who liked to go mountaineering, who just wanted to not do the crappy public school program and are finding things to do with themselves in the winter. And that's partly what we talked about our webinars is just how do you do fun stuff that you could explore and when use your youth? You know, they all say you youth's wasted on the young.

I'm trying to make it wasted less. Okay. You know, Malcolm Gladwell popularize the theory that ten thousand hours are needed to become world class. It's been a lot of documentation after that. But let's just assume you were presented with a very young person under the age of five. Do you think you could turn that person into a competitive World Cup ski racer or do you believe there's inherent natural talent. Yeah, there's there's an airent natural talent

that will make it a lot easier. I think you could turn them into a World Cup ski racer. Depending on what country they're from. We happen to be gifted with a lousy World Cup culture. So being from America, you could turn almost any race or get get taken them in at five. You could turn almost any racer into a World Cup or any person young person into a World Cup racer. Would they wig races? I doubt it. Um, it gets very nuanced and very difficult at the very

very top. We're talking about the best in the entire world. But you could definitely get them to race World Cup and place, say, you know, in the top thirty and in several races for virtually any human uh that you found. Okay, let's go back to education. Needless to say, we have a large education problem in the United States. There's the war between religious private public. Is there enough money keeople keeping people interested? Teaching to the test as opposed to

learning to analysis? Uh the analyze two questions, is your program scalable? And yes or no? Do you feel there's a way to solve the educational problem personally? In the United States. Yeah, I'll start with the second. First is is yeah, I think I think ours is fully scalable. This is I believe the solution is that the difference is we don't you need back end programming because this allows for this remarkable amount of freedom and flexibility of schedule.

You need programming to fit around that what the requirements are, and that programming has to be done well. School kind of cheats that system where they basically lock your kid up from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon. It's more of a glorified glorified babysitting system more than educational. I mean, the kids, if they're determined, can learn a

lot and can get something out of it. But in my opinion, the more critical elements, as we all see as you get to the top of an industry, is you know, perseverance, um, determination, self reliance, creativity. Things that aren't necessarily taught in books, they're discovered through activities, are through challenges and um I'm hoping that. Yeah, I mean, ours is fully scaled, but we could literally go. We have master class teachers. They're all recorded, so because the

way they're designed, you don't need more. I mean they are what they are. We will refine the curriculum all the time, but it's ultimately scalable to the entire us and the cost is less than public school. So call about eight thousand bucks right now for a public school kid. Uh cost us about eight thousand bucks to do this in the education is about four times better. So how do you motivate someone who is hardheaded and not motivating? Yeah,

I mean everyone loves to do something. Um, you know a lot of people don't know what they love to do yet, but they need exposure to lots of things to discover what that is, especially young people. It's usually activity,

interaction with other kids. And then we have a really clever way of kind of parlaying that passion, that enthusiasm for something that you wouldn't have to kick them three times out the door to go get them to do if it was their buddy out there playing basketball or going skiing or whatever, they're chomping at the bit to go do that. You parlay that into the understanding of how to sort of make things that suck not you know, fun, make things that suck exciting. And it's it's takes a

little creativity and a little time. But given the flexibility of the schedule, it makes a ton easier because they're not They're able to exhaust themselves doing things they love and then come in with a really as an attitude in the place, really um sort of receptive to learning and and get an incredible amount done. Okay, prior to going to Maine Caribasset Academy, which is ski racing Academy,

what was your educational experience? Lay at regional public school and then a bit of profile high school, junior high and freshman year, and it was, Um, I would say it was really easy for me. I wasn't uh, you know, exceptional in terms of grades or anything. I was kind of a middle of the road student, but I never failed things. I just didn't really do a lot of work, didn't engage much, wasn't interested. Um, I like science. I liked you know. I came from a family of doctors.

My dad was in medical school, as too older brothers or doctors, and his grandfather, his father, my grandfather was a doctor, um, a prominent East Coast doctor, so I kind of had like a I was exposed to lots of medical books and lots of my dad, you know, still try. He speaks Latin. He as an incredible vocabulary. So I had good homeschooling teachers prior to public school, which I started in third grade, and then public school was just kind of a waste of my time, I

felt like. So I was excited and willing to take the risk of going off to boarding school. But it was definitely um. It was. It was nigo blow because I was going from a big fish in a small pond to a small fish and a much bigger pond. But and the demands were much higher. But I knew that I was capable of dealing with it, and so I just kind of dove in. Okay, you're a legendary independent thinker. Where did you get that from your parents? From your family? Yeah, I mean it's it's the great

mystery is how much is uh nature versus nurture? I don't you know? Everyone in my family is stubborn. Right. We come from New Hampshire. It's a live, free or die state, Like just our state motto should tell you something. But I also my dad was in third year medical school. He was in his his what do you call that is?

Um Yeah, he's in the hospital actually diagnosing real patients and all that, and he walked from that, through it, through it away after coming from a family with a very prominent father who's a you know, open heart surgeon and pioneering a lot of stuff in the East Coast, two older brothers who are doctors practicing, and he walked away from that to go speak at Woodstock and uh, you know, and formed the political party, the Turtle Party, and you know a bunch of he was a hippie,

you know. He So there's a defiant nature that comes from my dad's side and my mom's side is probably only amplified their true New Hampshire, Um, you know locals and and you know, screw anybody who tries to tell me what to do. And so I definitely had it from that side genetically and and culturally, like it's it's the nature of New Hampshire. You do what you want to do, and um, you stick to it, and you're

accountable and you don't blame other people. And so I had that also through my upbringing of my you know, i'd leave that when I was four or five years old. I go outside at eight thirty in the morning and i'd come back at four you know, and I don't know how much the time my mom was tracking me around. I doubt she was, but um comforting to think she was, because I've got myself in a some sketchy situations and

was touch and go for a lot of times. But um, that kind of independence, you know, teaches you a lot about um risk management and self reliance and and being accountable to your actions and that, you know, so I was. It's it's a mystery to me, but certainly I had it from every angle, uh to to develop into a very defiant, independent, self reliant, uh self motivated person. Okay, before you go to care Bassett, what kind of kid are you? Are you the loner, a member of the group,

a leader, an outcast? What were you like? Uh? I was probably a general? Um I was. I didn't like the spotlight, so I didn't like being the guy. And there was always the guy. There was like some kid who was better looking or it was funny or had like you know, all the jokes or whatever. But I was super dominant in athletics. So on the soccer field baseball, I've never played, and I got to be the best kid on the team really quick. That was really good

at I wasn't naturally that gifted. I was just exposed to a ton of sports as a home schooled kid, with a tennis camp all summer and skiing all winter, and snowboarding and sledding and standing up on those old snurfboards and climbing around in the rivers and running up

and down the rivers and rock climbing of Mountcols. So I had this massive if you want to talk about gladwell, I had this massive volume of hugely dynamic sports activity, coordination, mental discipline, all these things at a really young age. So it allowed me to adjust and tweak to any situation I was in and be successful. So, um, you know, I had I had good friends. I was not a bully, I was I was a connector. I was friends with the older kids because they played sports at a higher

level and I like that. I was friends with a skater guys. I smoked a bunch of weed because I like skateboarding and you know, and they were fun. I was friends with guys who were forty five years old because they skied on cold days. They were the ski bums. And I played soccer with my uncle's who were a generation before me, and so I really had. Like in New Hampshire, you don't have the option to pick one friend. Ye for me, I, like so many things, I was

required to make friends with everybody. So I had a very diverse group of friends and I was kind of jumping around and most of them couldn't understand how does he like come skateboard with us and then go rock climbing with his uncle or go play a soccer game that afternoon. And that's just the way I lived. Okay, you talk about home schooling, but from K through the first and second year of high school you were in

traditional school, right, No. I started public school in third grade in like, yeah, the middle of third grade thing, how do you decide to go to Cara bassett Um. The year before, I had gotten um sort of violated in a way, uh politically by a coach in Franconia. He'd he'd called up a race after and said that I admitted to him that I hooked a tip and

I should be disqualified. I had never done that. He was upset with me because we had a little bit of a throwdown in front of some of the other kids and a couple of parents where he was saying that I couldn't train because I was too bad, and I should do the drills he wanted me to do, and I said, I don't care about your drills. I just want to run some gates because I have j O qualifiers tomorrow. And so he was pretty bad heard about that argument and and felt like he wanted to

get me back. He called this race how a race thrown out? And uh, I didn't make the Junior Olympics that year as a twelve year old, and uh, my town and and kind of everybody ran him out of town on a on a you know, tard and feathered, but it didn't change the fact that it was out of the jail is that previous year. And they said, look, you know, if you're serious about this, we'll figure out a way, um to get you into care about that.

My mom was good, was best friends when she was fifteen with the headmaster's wife, so that was kind of an in. And then I had to you know, I lived with a day student twenty miles away from school, off in the woods with no no access by car. Um. That was my first year at c v A, and I only went for the winter term. So I went November and came back, and I guess March um and uh, and I had to work all summer to pay it off. So I paid paid my own way with help from

some of the locals in my town. But it was, yeah, it was it was scratching at that point. What did your father do for a living having dropped out of

medical school, professional hippie? He? Uh. He and my mom were together till I was six, and then they separated and he went down to Tennessee primarily because he was unhappy and I think had had had had had several you know, early seventies, mid seventies affairs, but also um, he had missed out on He he invented foot spars, which were these date fig maple syrup, a bunch of different nuts in this tiny little rapper bar. And this is in nineteen seventy nine probably, and uh that's pre

power bar, pre everything else. He if you went back through his his life from just before I was born, he he invented six or seven things that turned into billion dollar industries. And he was way ahead of the curve. But his lack of ability to see things through or or do the steps that maybe weren't as fun for him. Uh, prevented him from ever monetizing anything. So then he when he separated from my mom, which I think, as I said, was not to go make money, but that was part

of the excuse. He went down to Tennessee and was a tree route, so he would climb up in huge trees along these big mansion uh driveways and outside of Nashville, and he he'd clean up the trees and make sure branches were going to break people's houses and cars. And UM he did that for I think five or six years down there, and then uh ended up moving back up. Now he's he worked. Phrase he was a homeless outreach worker for fifteen years in New England. UM, he still

maintains his very hippie hippie approach. He's never really made made any money. Okay, if you're at Cara Bassett, you get out from under the bad coach. You're there, Hey, do you fit in these the coaching beneficial? UM? I would say fit in fine because I love sports and I was a hard worker. UM coaching was still problematic because I was bad. Uh you know that the end of that first year, UM, I didn't really have any

good results to speak of. Uh. Certain coaches could see that I had a lot of ross speed and I

was naturally very athletic um. But they they sat me down after the first year, and again keep in mind, I was I was getting up at four thirty in the morning, doing chores, getting on a snowbile, snowbiling six miles along these crazy main trails into Kingfield, hitching a ride with some worker or employee up to carabast, getting there in time for morning meeting, going through classes, going to hill training classes, come back down, get in a car eighteen miles back down to the Kingfield, back on

a snowobile six miles through the woods, chores, homework, dinner, bed and doing that over and over again. And I was with another student who was two years older than me, but then he would go off on fist racing trips for a week and a half two weeks, so I'd be on my own. So I was, you know, fourteen years old, driving my own snowobile through six miles from the woods like rickety ass. And at the end of

that year I had they had like an intervention. They sat down with the Dina students, UM all the coaches and they said, look, you're lazy and you. You suck at skiing, You're never gonna be any good. Um, we don't like your attitude. You don't, you don't really you know, show a lot of like initiative enthusiasm. If you switch to snowboarding, we'll give you a full ride back to school, you'll live in the dorm next year, won't pay anything

all set. Um. I was good at snowboarding. I'd grown up snowboarding and we had an all school snowboard races. What inspired this is I was like second or third and one of the runs and the that we had the best snowboards in the country at that time, and they went around the circle and basically all just just pop my balloon, like talk about p in the serial.

It was. It was brutal, and I was happy not to have broken down and cried right there, because it was pretty brutal because I I was doing double what any other student in the school was doing, minus the dude who was my my sort of I guess housemate, but he was even doing less than I wasn't he's a couple of years older, so um. But I reflected on that thought about a bunch and then told him the pounds and and that if they needed to charge me more to come back to school, i'd I'd figure

out a way to pay it. And I wanted to be a ski racer and snowboarding was not what I wanted to do, so um yeah, I fit in, but I was still definitely defiant and definitely was not fitting into the system the way they wanted to. And I said, look, you guys, I suck now. I'll give you that. You're not wrong, but I'm gonna be better when I'm fifteen, and I'm gonna be better when i'm eighteen, and when i'm twenty you'll start to see how good I can be.

That's what it's gonna take. And I apologize if that's too long a timeline for you guys, but you know, I've known this for ten years at that point, since I was six or seven when I talked to my grandmother about it a bunch and I said, look, it's not important how good I am when I'm fifty and there's not a lot of prize money there, and if you win races, you know, it's it's a different deal. I need to be good when I'm when I'm old

enough to be successful in the world stage. Okay, ultimately you were, but you know, you have a unique style, and certainly I grew up in the area. Was your in the are of first your skis were together, then racers were a part and they had changed in equipment. Was the coaching ever helpful or really you were coaching yourself and you had the benefit of them setting the gates up and logistics. I would say both. I mean, I think the coaching was very rarely helpful in the

immediate term. I think the coaching was really helpful long term, over over one or two year span where I listened to everything and I retain information really well, and mostly what I was doing. The way that I developed, in the way that I learned things was by watching other people. I would watch somebody who I liked a certain thing. They could be worse than I did than I was at that time, but I liked specifically the way they

moved into a turn. And I had a very good understanding of of sort of the biomechanics of skiing and how did underrate speed. And that's one thing that I wasn't willing to give up, and that was always a pushback from the coaches. They wanted me to do manually adjust certain things, and I said, I can't do those things because it'll cost me these things that I need to keep alive because if I if I kill him, I'm not sure I'll have arrest resurrect them later. And

those are the most important things. So UM, the coaching, I would say in hindsight, was a lot of it was UM was emotional arousal control and races patients. I learned a lot of that stuff from those coaches, and I had some amazing coaches up at t v A. From a technical standpoint, I don't think I learned that much. Okay, speaking of technical standpoint, you had a breakthrough. You were in the U S Nationals I believe it was, and used the K two for which was a shaped recreational ski.

How did you decide to do that? I've been a snowboarder, um, as I said. They tried to get me a switch of snowboarding in ninth grade. This is all the way into my senior year, and I've been working on rage tore me who was a K two rep uh and the East Coast too. Raised with my uncle, so I had, you know, kind of a little extra credibility with him

and he's a great dude. And uh, I'd cut a snowboard, alpine snowboard in half and mounted mounted ski bindings on it and flipped the edges so that I had one side cut edge and then one raw band sad edge. If you touch that to the snow, you crashed immediately. And I was arcing turns and I had George watched me, and I said, George, we need to build a shape ski. I was always trying to innovate. It was during that time we had Derby flex and higher lifters, and the

one thing that was missing was more side cut. And you could clearly see that snowboarders could turns all day that it would have been happening for years, and we just hadn't done in skiing. So George said, hey, we tried that in the seventies. It didn't work. I was like, well, you tried it wrong, let's try it again. And um, I had worked on him for two years. Finally he got them to build a semblance of of what I'd

asked for. And I did everything from exact construction. I wanted a cap construction to give torsional stiffness, and I was in mechanical drawing and all that stuff. So I was doing at a on board and I was drawing everything out and um, finally he built them, and uh, the day that I got them, it changed really changed the sport. Um Alan had been developing their shape ski during that same phase, but no one had skied on it yet, and races, no one had really experimented with it.

So the K two four was the first ski that I had really developed um and forced through and I raced on it in the Junior Olympics and I won the Super G by two point you know, seven seconds, and I was more than five seconds ahead before I crashed. I went on my hip a couple of times on the bottom and lost a ton of time, but still ended up winning by almost three seconds, and then won the Giant Sloan by over two seconds as well with

several crashes, and the Giant Slam as well. So that really shocked people and opened the eyes and put the you know, the magnifying glass on K two. And then the next year, everybody, I didn't use those skis in the nationals. That's that's a common mistake. I was only in the nationals for Giant slom and and slom and I crashed in the gs and blew out. And then

and the slalom, I used the traditional ski. My my slalom ski was the same length as my K two four, so I was using the same length and slalom and gs and uh and I'm pulled off a really magical um run from way back in the pack and finished third to objectively qualified for the team. If I hadn't objectively qualified, there was zero chance they were taking me on the team. Okay, so you are partially responsible for the development of the K four K two four. Yeah, yeah,

And I think I mean not to split hairs. But I wouldn't even say partially. I would say, uh, you know, nineties seven percent. They fought me on it for two years. I've been pushing it. I gave George the snowboard. I showed him the side cut, I showed him everything. I cut the snowboard even thinner, and that screwed it up. And I said, this is what you did in the seventies when you tried shape skis. You didn't have the torsion.

If I left the snowboard as half, I had a raw edge of wood that i'd bands on, and then a side cut finished edge. I could arc turns on that if I cut off another half of that to make it the width of a normal race ski. Its skied like ship because it was too torsionately weak. It would twist too much, and that's what they had messed up. So I said, you know, I really worked hard on him for two years, and I will say, of all my qualities, my persistence and stubbornness are are two of

my elite level of qualities. And I just wore them down, honestly. And he finally went in there and said, look, dude, we gotta build these skis. And they didn't even really tell him. He said, it's a Rex ski. It'll be awesome. We'll try it. They built him and they sold out across the country in a week and a half. Okay, let's talk about equipment. You were with numerous companies. You started with Fisher, you went to ros and y'all. You

were Thetomic, you went to Head. Is there really any difference. Let's just start with the skis themselves opposed to the boots. Is there really any difference or you can get in and make the ski work for you. No, it's a massive difference, massive difference. I mean the engineers are are different philosophically, the equipment, the layoup process side cuts there.

There's a huge prints also that they became systems pretty early, where a boot, binding plate, ski all work together, and if you didn't have that right you could really screwed up. But keep in mind before that, I skied on UM K two Olwen Rosignal previous to World Cup racing. This is through my sort of high school years. UM. I skied on uh Nasal, I skied on Atomic twice, really two different versions there. UM, and I gravitated towards K two because of the relationship with George, and I was

able to get better skis and then UM. But yeah, the difference from KTU to Fisher was was night and day. I mean it was a huge I would have had a really, really really hard time trying to win a World Cup race that I stayed on K two my entire career, UM, regardless of my own engineering prowess or anything else. Fisher I had the ability to win races that year. Um, then Rosignal I had the ability to win races and start moving into speed effectively, so into

super ge downhill, and then UM from from Rozzie. Is when I kind of I wouldn't say sold out, but switched to Atomic where I knew I was do. I was physically finally mature and strong enough, and um, I knew I could be a world beater. So I switched to Atomic and that's when I won, you know, the Wired to wire overall World Cup and all the events in seventeen days, you know. Um. And then and then after that was more of I wanted to develop skis and fell in with Head and stayed with them for

three years. Okay, let's start with Fisher. Okay, I agree, totally ski ski totally different. I happen to like the French skis. I like something a little bit more alive. But at World Cup level you're not skiing on retail skis. So when we talk about Fisher, would you tell them how to make the skis or they just had a bunch of skis? You tested them and you skied what you liked. No. By that point I had a very

clear idea. That was a big part of it is K two was actually pulling away from World Cup, and it was almost mandatory. I switched. And when I went to several companies which I was in demand. I could have switched to several UM. I told Fisher, will you build me this exact slom ski? This is the ski it needs to be, this, this fiberglass, this top sheet, this side cut, this would core this many laminates across. Will you build me this? And they said, yeah, it's

not gonna work, but we'll build it for you. And I said, okay, build it for me. And UM that was that was a dealmaker because the other companies were at that time this is you know, in two thousand, UM I was. I didn't have the credibility and the industry wasn't prepared to take that type of input from the athletes. They would take, as you said, they'd give

them five pairs, which do you like best? And then they would go back and try to figure out which materials to change to make the new ones better and all that. So, UM, that was the very beginning of that. And I wanted a company that was going to do exactly what I said, and Fisher offered to do that, UM,

and so I went. And actually that was the beginning of a massive revolution in the sport where within two years every company had their athletes in the actual ski room showing them fiberglass, showing them metals, and trying to figure out because there was a huge gap between what you felt on the hill and what the engineer decided was going to impact that feeling. There. There's there's thirty ways to skin a cat in that case, and they just had too big a gap. So we closed that

gap right up, okay, slowly. How and why did you decide to switch to Rozzie. I decided because of one particular gs ski, so I'd want a couple of slams on Fisher. I had won a couple of gs is.

Um the ski was already going down the path that we ended up on then now, which is a very tiptail ski, so you could feel the very very tip of the ski engaged in the snow, and if it hit a bump, it would deflect and you'd lose radios, so it would flap down and it would just and I skied on Nordica, I skied on Razzie, I skied on Dinas Star And the rosignal skis that they had for me at that time was a complete anomaly in the irony, As this has happened to me several times.

They built five pairs. So it's a prototype run of a ski and they said, have body test these keys. Um, they couldn't get the I don't know if you remember Rozzie. At that time, they had a V A S plate. It's this little metal plate that's stuck on the top of the ski. They couldn't get that plate to stick to the aluminum which is right under the top sheet, and then the felt it was metal on metal and

it would just fly off. And so they actually on that particular batch, they said, well, ship will just cut a hole in the aluminium, will will stick that thing through that hole to the aluminium, will glue it onto the wood below, and it worked perfect. So stayed on. I got all five of those pairs of skis. I

broke one immediately actually in the testing program. But because they cut that hole in the top layer of aluminum, they created a bit of a hinge point in the ski right there, and you had this unbelievable grip point just in front of the binding. So if you slid into a turn in chundery, you know, icy conditions, you had this grip point right in front of the binding

that you could always rely on. And the tip wasn't even the part grabbing you pulled radius that was disproportionate to your side cut because the tip was actually not doing it. It was just folding in this tiny little space right in front of the binding and you just it was like a hockey skate. And I I didn't know at the time that that was the only five pairs in existence. UH three M who was their glue

provider at that time, gave them glue that worked. They built every ski from that point forward without cutting a hole in the aluminum because now the metal stuck to the metal and stayed on there perfectly. And we spent two years trying to figure out why my race skis were the best skis ever built, and every other pair they built was garbage compared to it. So um that one ski was the reason. It was everything I've been

looking for. And I went one the g S title against one of the strongest giants long and fields that that's been around, um you know, Herman Benny Reich, uh Shaun Felder, Pollander, uh d d A Couch Um Niberg eber Harder. It was like the powerhouse of g skiing at that time. For me to win was something that I wouldn't have been able to do with any other ski company at that time. Okay, now from a retail level,

Rozzie's in Atomic Sky radically differently. Did you experience that, You say you went for the money, but that's a big switch. No, I didn't. I mean you mean when I supposed to Atomic. No. That was one of the great regrets in my career looking back, was that I went to Atomic. They paid me half as much as Rossie did, and a quarter as much as Nordica was offering me at that time. A quarter. I would have had the biggest contract there's ever been in ski racing

by going to Nordica. But Um in Nordica had almad at that time he was just kind of phasing out. I would have had an amazing quiver of skis. They were good in four events. I could have stayed on Nordica boots Um. There was a lot there that that really, in hindsight, I would love to know would have happened had I made that switch. But the Atomics I was on at that time with the Beta, so that was that that little arch top they had two aluminum tubes

in there. That Beta did the same thing that Rozzie cutting the hole in their ski did, but a different way. It created a torsional imbalance between those two tubes that were longitudinally very stiff. The ski was was really stiff, but tortially all the way up until the binding. The ski actually rotated this way because there were two separate tubes that moved independently, and that that was a remarkable g ski. Um. It was the second best GSK I'd ever been on. And I wanted Atomic because of super

G downhill. I was willing to suck in slam and and figure it out, but I wanted super G downhill because what I was on on Rosenal was not allowed me to move into downhill SUPERG. But I wasn't competitive and you know again I can't second guess myself. And that I got on Atomic built my first pair of boots was down in Cheon in Chile, south of Santiago Go.

And I didn't lose a run of supergier downhill skiing against the entire French team Darren, my own team, who was who was strong at that time, UM for for a month and a half and I didn't I didn't lose a single run. I mean, so it was kind of a I wish I knew what would happen if I had made a different choice, But it was a very strong switch. Okay, when you were there, certainly the Austrians, an Austrian company, Herman Meyer, et cetera. You're kind of

further down the totem pole. Does that affect what equipment you get in, what attention you get? Yeah, that was a big part of the oh six Olympic debacle. Um I built a supergee ski. There was also a downhill ski UM in in say September, and UH and they politically there was shenanigans there. They the Austrian team, which basically controls the Austrian factory, UH, took those skis test them.

They couldn't figure them out, which is I wasn't trying to do intentionally, but there was a very specific way those skis need to be too and and mounted to work right, and they couldn't figure it out. So they kept trying and kept trying them. No guy could make them work. They were super fast on the flats, but

they couldn't figure out to make them turn. And they held those all the way until two days before the Olympic downhill UM and then they gave him to me and Darren because they knew that I wouldn't be able to resist trying them and they felt like that would be a distraction. Darren and I were the two strongest downhillers really in the world at that point, and uh, and they wanted every advantage they could get, and that

political Shenanigan's upset both of us. We ended up racing on the same pair of skis Darren and I. I skied first, I was starting before him. They ran the skis up the chairlift. He they re finished them at the start and he ran the same skis and unfortunately, lack of experience on them and all that we we didn't have success in the downhill. I won the combined downhill against the same field a day later by a second. Um. So, I mean, you know, they were successful in in thwarding

our our stuff. But uh, that was a piece of why I was so petulant and upset during that oh six Olympics, because my team didn't go to bat for me, and I was just, uh, yeah, I was taking advantage of it away. How long does a pear of race skis last depends on how good year keeping them safe. My my Rozzie's ice skied on the same pair of race skis the entire first year and say six of eight races the second year one and would but I wouldn't. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't train on them. I wouldn't

bring them out for anything. I wouldn't even bring my training skis out to train on. I would train on other skis that I specifically tuned in a way to make them more similar to my race skis, even though I was nowhere near time wise. And we had a little funny thing at Solden where we'd we'd do the Austrian time trial before the first World Cup of the year was was sold in the US had a sort

of relationship with Austria. We trained with them, and we'd be training on it right before the time trial, and my coaches like, dude, you're sucking, Like what's going on. I'd like, don't worry about I'll be fine, and I'd go out and bring out just my training skis for

the time trial. And I won that time trial. I won both runs three years in a row, against all the Austrians and all of our team, And then I would put those skis away and I'd go back to getting beat by guys on my own team, and then I'd pull out the race skis for a race day and and win races on them. But it's just you have to know how to manage them, and you've gotta be really careful with what you do. Even hitting hard ice, you can't you can't jam certain ways on it. You

certainly can't hit rocks or anything else. Okay. In the switch to head you were really the first big name to go to head. Yeah. Johan Eliosh, who's the owner of head Um, you know, and I got to know each other a bit and he said, look, you know, my goal is to be the number one ski company in the world. And I was like, all right, let's do it. I was like, if I'm gonna join you, you gotta I said. I don't want to get a bunch of push back. I said, you know me, Uh,

if you're bringing me on for this, I can. I can get you there. You will be in the number one ski company. When I tell you to buy this athlete, you don't bicker about it. You just buy that athlete. When I tell you about build new skis in this category, build new skis like it's gonna cost you some money, but will get to number one. He said, I'm not concerned about the money. Let's do it. And um, that was an exciting fun, uh new project for me because I was building skis not just for myself. I was

building skis for the women's team. I was building skis for men's who skied very differently than I did in some cases, were much more talented in certain areas than I was. And that was that was fun. I enjoyed that a lot. Okay, but you're essentially going, it's a blank slate. Did you really just tell them how to build the skis? They had did remarkable engineers. Um, you know, Head was maybe the strongest in the entire world in

terms of their raw engineering power. What they didn't have was what all these other ski companies that really capitalized in the six years previous to that was really good communication with top level athletes who are raising World Cup all the time. They just didn't have the athletes, and they didn't have a rapport or vocabulary to communicate even with the athletes they did have, which were lower level. Um. So yeah, when I came on, I basically communicated with

those engineer it was. It was a great It was a great time because they understood everything I said. Nothing was shocking. They had already done a bunch of great things over the past years that I actually reinvigorated and said, no, I think you were really close. This was an awesome idea. You guys are way ahead of the curve. You just have to tweak these things because here's how this feels

on the snow, and here's what you're missing. And they could do it, you know, overnight, and then I'd moved things. So we moved forward very quickly. Within that first year when I switched um that was six or seven season. We had the best speed skis on the planet that first year because we reinvigorated the traction system with that cut. They put this cut through the top layer and top layer of aluminum and they bridge that with a piece of aluminium underneath it. But it does that same thing.

It creates an inflection point in the ski and they just hadn't quite got that right. And we got that right, and the skew was unbelievable. What about the famous two edge skis to I mean, like the one was on top of another, that those work was that you know, just get a lot of press. I think it just got a lot of press. I mean it was you know, there's metal slow period, like the thinner edges the better, UM. But there's certain elements of that that I think are

gonna be relevant in the future. UM, particularly for big mountain really steep stuff, having an edge that skis normally, but having a secondary edge that comes out of your side wall. That's essentially for fifties six degree pitches that what you have a grip point that's really only right underneath your foot where you don't feel the tip or the tail. You're you're just like a hockey skate right

under your foot. And that can be UM, really really important for safety when you're up on a you know, face that you're suspended over eight hundred foot cliff and you you know, your tip HiT's a wind drift and your backwards and UM, I think there's a lot to that. I think there's been some unbelievably smart creative engineers in the sport over the last four or five decades. And unfortunately it's it's a system. So it's kind of like

a house of cards. If you did everything right, but one thing was wrong and the whole thing didn't work. So in this case, a lot of it is revisiting really old clever ideas and figuring out how to um, you know, tweak them a little bit and see if there's if there's value there. Okay, what about boots? What was your revolution in boots? You certainly switched a number of times. Yeah, and and boots roy is a frustration

point for me. I wish that, um, i'd had a wealthy benefactor who would allowed me to build my own boots UM because I felt like it's such a crazy concept that we build this more or less chunk of plastic that just bends and flexes and somehow it works. And it does work, I won't deny that, but it doesn't work as well as it should um. To me, boots are much more of an engineering piece than any

other part of the system. Right is you should have a boot that's controlled by either gas shocks, oil shocks, elastomers.

Something there shouldn't be just plastic. The bending and bubbling where you know, in the whole front of the boot where all the flexing and movement happens, is constantly being open and closed to get your foot in it out of it and like, if you buckle the buckles lightly tighter, you get a totally different performance, you know, curved than you would with a looser It's just to me that

was insane. So when I was on Nordica, I had some breakthroughs in terms of basic understanding of what different things could do to a boot, and that was my favorite boot. Um. When I was on Atomic I I did the same things and was able to create a really good four event boot. I see the exact same boot and slomgs supertoo downhill in one uh you know, seven races in in fourteen days or seventeen days or something.

So um and on the same boot, and that that was the sort of extent beyond that, I think boots for garbage. So right now I see on a full tilt, which is an old rightly um from the eighties, right it literally is the mold from the eighties, and um that that boot was the best boot on the world then, and the only knock against it was it didn't turn skis that well, and that was because the skis had no side cut didn't turn very well. So now I think that's by far the best boot on the planet.

So that's why I use. But I am trying to push somebody to evolve the boot process because I think there's a huge, huge capability for improvement there. Okay, specifically, what makes the full tilt boot better flexes straightforward, so

you you flex linear u versus flexing out. So if you were to bolt your typical ski boots to the ground with a base down to flex forward, your knees have to travel out, usually ten degrees, thirteen degrees whatever, but they travel out, so if you're forward on the front of your boot, you're actually increasing the edge angle. And then when you with your knee moving in a

linear motion straight backwards, the edge decreases an angle. Even though you're not decreasing your edge angle with your knees, the skis decreasing because you're coming back to a neutral spot. That to me, is a terrible design. It worked well when the skis had no sidecut because as you drove forward you could the ski would tip way up and it would cause the front to kind of turn when no sidecut, But now it just creates an overly aggressive ski that causes all kinds of problems and knee injuries

and stuff. So that's one piece of it. They have the interchangeability. I can switch my tongue out and go from a six flex tongue to attend to a fourteen, and I have this your thing tongue that they made me. Um, they would be like the equivalent of like like a sixteen or seventeen or eighteen. But um, you can change the back the cuff the same thing. You can just pop it off and put on a different one, and

um dramatically change the characteristics of the boots. So and you slide it on like a slipper and no snow gets in there. It's just it's just better. Okay, you famously tweaked your boots on the door remains you were added forward lean, So when it comes to forward lean and ramp aangle, what were your thoughts. It's all it's

a system. It only matters about the system. If you're skiing a ski that you can trust the front half of the ski, and you needed certain things, you could ramp up, But generally I was going the other way. If I ramped up in the boot, I would de ramp on the ski, So I would put lifters under the toe piece of the binding. So even though I had more ankle flexion, in the boot. That was just to get the boot to line up correctly so that I could so I could drive down with my knee

instead of tipping forward with my knee. So I always like to drive down into the ski with my knee versus so I needed ankle flection. If the boot was too open, too upright, the angle was too open, then you you were stuck. So I would always get that to a place I liked, and then I would bring the toe up to get me balanced on the ski. Definitely. One of the common mistakes is too much ramp angle and too much forward lean and too much delta between

the front and back of the bindings. Typical bindings are you know, five millimeters lower in the front and the back um, and that's when you compound that by ramp angle inside the boot where the front is you know, sometimes thirteen fourteen millimeters difference between the height of the

heel and the height of the toe. It's just this whole big ramp and it makes it impossible for people to ski forward because they're so tipped forward that if they actually pushed forward, they would just fall over the front of the skis. So um, I did everything, but I would say, I ended up in a really good place with fairly neutral to upright boots um with good ankle flection, and I was moving my foot around inside the boot quite a bit getting the right ankle position

versus where the boot actually liked to bend um. But basically a flat ramp angle on the ski. Okay, that's been a big evolution. If you go to laying, which has been around since the fifties, hit it, say in the sixties with the old skis, the Stratos, the DTA meet VR seventies, they had a lot of ramp angle. Now they're really flat. Okay, So on some level you're

saying that's followed you. How does that affect how you ski on shape skis In the old days, when it was so much harder to have a car of turn you had to get the weight forward, do you feel that that's less of an issue and it's more about being centered now? Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're going dead straight in a straight line on a shape ski and you don't have to push forward at all,

you just tip over. That tip initiates so quickly with that sidecut and pulls in so quickly that automatically your inertia is going forward, and now the skis trying to turn that way you are forward. You can't avoid being for it. It's actually hard to not be for it on a a dramatic side cut ski. Um, you're exactly right. They were designed around and so is an orderkle grhand

Prix was designed around skis with no side cut. They were much longer where you really had to you had to twist and snap that front to get it to do anything, and now you don't. Yeah, the ski does all that for you automatically, and so a more upright boot with much less ramp angle makes you more efficient. You your skeletally, you're more lined up, You're able to support more force and absorb more. Um. The challenges with kneflection.

You don't have a lot of suspension in the ski system right from the bottom of the ski to the all the way up. Your shin can't move that much, so a lot of your suspension is from your knee of your hip, and that's a really slow moving, long travel suspender. Um. So I tend to still like some ankle flection for absorption purposes, but again that's where the full tilt is so much better than other boots is

that you you can't fold it over the top. You know, I broke my ankle inside my boot twice because I would hyper flex the boot and it would just pull my ankle apart and snap off the bottom of my tibia. And it's you can't do that in the full tail because the instep is actually if your ankle joint is here a normal boot, the instep might be there. In the full tailed in step is like two inches away from the front ear, so you it doesn't cause any lever.

You can't be pulled up out of the boot. You'll just crunch against it, and it actually drives your heel down and back no matter what you're doing. So it's you know, for me, it's safer to okay. Now you skied at the literally top level of the elite level. And before you made it to the top, were you ever intimidated by the competition? Now you had a long

history of competition. I was not a good ski racer, but I ski with the World Cup freestyle people in the moguls all the time, could ski better than them. But once you're in competition, it's like this guy Scott Brooks Mack he got better in competition. Okay, so what was it like for you competing? Yeah, it was, there was, Um, there was certainly times where I was intimidated. I mean, there's a picture of Herman. It didn't happen early so much because I was always like, look, I'm gonna get better.

I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. There was a time where Herman was I think it was nine, Um, he was on his full doping program, and the guy's legs were just like he's on a table in a lab with with the electro stim hooked up to his legs and he's doing a full both quads, full flection, like rocked out, and there's like striation that he had muscles that I don't even know are on a normal human that were like stacked on top of normal muscles.

And and I was just like, I mean, I put me in the tank for like eight months because I was like, this is garbage, Like there's no way, no matter. He's better technically than Miami's on better skis, he's doping, he's you know, better technically by a mile. Um, Like

what am I talking about here? And and uh, eventually I overcame it but um, I was one of the people who because of my ability to take risk and and that was my strength, was my ability to sort of motivate myself to take risk and be willing to do that in competition and deal with the fact that I was going to fail a lot of the time. That was my biggest skill set and I recognized really quickly even Herman didn't have that, I had them in that category. That was my that was my trump card.

And honestly I set up specific split times, which you know, not not that we have to touch on it, but ski oh is my app that I've created now that measures everything, measures exact speed, distance, travel, g forces, all that stuff. During that time of like late high school into early World Cup, I was setting up split times because I needed to know how fast am I. I needed some positive reinforcement. I couldn't finish races. I was like, I only care about how fast I am for these

two gates. I need to know that I have like elite level speed for two gates, and I would see what I could do for two gates. In the middle, of course, I would set up a specific split time for six seconds, and and that really helped my confidence because I was like, look, I haven't figured it out yet. I certainly can't do it for fifty four gates in a row. But for those two gates, I am way faster than anybody in our country and possibly the world.

And that was sort of the thing that got me over the deficiencies that I had in every other category because I was kind of the middle of the road type dude in fitness, technique, endurance, um. You know, equipment, you know, tactics, understanding of hills, snow conditions, inspection, everything. But in a couple of categories, I was elite level and I had to figure out how to ulize those and capitalize on them. Okay, to what degree was doping a factor? To what degree is it's still a factor?

And you famously said you didn't care if anybody doped, you could still beat them. Yeah, I don't know that that's exactly what I said, but I think you covered the gist of it. Um, I you know it was It's always been a thing. I think it's been a thing in virtually every sport since the beginning of time. I mean, I think guys used to chew coca leaves back in the old days, when they had little foot

race over in Greece. But um, I think that there's there's a misperception that doping does it for you, that you dope and then you're just better, and that's just not the case. The guys. The the big, the big advantage of doping as you can train more and you recover more quickly. So half the doping stuff isn't even enhancement things, it's recovery things. So if you can train. I mean, the cost Lish family, I love them, they're

great people. They both had organ failure later on their careers because they were on these programs that allowed them to ski twice or three times as much as every other World Cup racer. And they got really really good because they trained three times as much as any other World Cup racer, but it also caused organ failure. And for me, I was kind of the mindset of like, look, this isn't Tour de France, Tour de France. If you're not doping, I don't think you have a realistic chance

of winning. You know, um, you know football, if you're not doping, you know American football, you're likely to get beat up throughout the season and not recover as well. And you're gonna get thrown around by guys who are that's but in ski racing because it's a minute or because it's two minutes. I felt like if I was willing to take the risk and great, I had to adjust my criteria, I would have loved it w of the races I was in, but that just wasn't in

the cards for me. I was like, I can get through a minute, and it's more going to be about my intensity and my risk taking and how I can manage that. I'm I'm capable of beating even guys who are I'd always dealt with it. Guys who are much fitter than I was, much more technically sound, better equipment, and I beat them before, so I didn't really see

that as a massive problem. I just felt like I wasn't gonna win the overall very many times because guys who were on that recovery program were just more fresh all the time, and I was not. Okay, so you've retired, then you wanted to come out of retirement using the full tilt boots, using Bomber. Skis Head said, no, Ultimately, you had a relationship with Bomber. Now I have a

relationship with cross and take us through that evolution. Yeah, when I quit, I was I was well, well, good and done, um, but I still had things a bit like Rocky and Rocky six right. There was I wouldn't say there was skeletons in the closet, but there was things in the basement that I wanted to do and you can't do them on your local ski hill. You needed a World Cup forum and with the conditions and the level of safety to actually put them to the test.

And it was more honestly, it wasn't about winning races. It wasn't about proving anything. It was simply about understanding what was possible with equipment and things like that. And it was the first time I've had the handcuffs off in eight years, um out from under head. And I retired with the intent of not doing that. But then

I got on the skis. I skied on him for this project for Samsung up in Lake Louise and my my good friend Craig Daniels, who had been with me, and we had some technology like Skio on the skis that were measuring things. He was following me with a with a big follow cam trying to get this footage for them, and and he after about the fifth run, he said, dude, I've never seen you ski like this. He's like, if you raised a World Cup right now, you would destroy people. I was like, I was like,

I know, I feel the same way. It's I'm able to move because the boots flexed straightforward instead of out, and because the skis were designed with much less sidecut but a slight hinge point in the middle, I was able to hold almost tuck down the steep pitch and in like Louise where c turn would normally be in a super G And he's like, I've never seen anything like this, and that that got me excited because I felt like my at that point it was really about

legacy and what I was giving back to the sport. And I felt like if I understood that, and I could evolve equipment and ski boots to be able to allow your average person to have that same confidence level and improvement, um, I'd be doing something good for the sport. And it was a bummer that they shut me down because I think in the end it would have been great for head as well. Um, but it is what it is, Okay. That must have been very frustrating. There was no way to work that out. Johan Johan is

a peculiar cat. Uh. I love him, he's a good friend. We're friends now still. Um. But that was a very American business um litigation. I mean, he had he sent me a seven hundred page he moved forums three times, tied us up and send a seven hundred pages because I wanted mine was one page that I sent him. It was here's what I'm requesting, here's what we said before. Uh, you're not paying me anything anyway. It's illegal for you to block me from making a living in my in

my profession without pay, without compensation. That that's illegal in Colorado, California, anywhere in the US. Basically, Uh, he moved for hum three times to jump that around. All he was trying to do is tie us up until the season started so I couldn't do it. And UM, you know, I can respect somebody who's efficient at what they want to do, and he was, so I can respect that. But in the end, I think we all lost out. Okay, bomb Or, after you got involved, turned into more of an expensive

boutique SKI. Ultimately you left and went to cross on. Tell us about that. Yeah, I think you know, coming from where I was at that moment where there was still potential to race, there was still this development. Then as that game unrealistic with Johan kind of putting his foot down on me, Um, we moved into that other space and it was not where I wanted to be. So UM, I had a contract, I wrote it out. I did my best for them, UM, wish them all the best, but wanted to go with a ski company

where I could see my vision really come true. And quite honestly, I don't care about building skis for super rich people or I think skiings expensive enough as it is. I went through it as a young person. I would love to build skis and make them good enough that I could sell a million pairs of skis a year for two hundred dollars a pair, and build them for eighty dollars a pair and sell them all direct and make twenty dollars a pair, and I make a bunch

of money. Um. You know. And even then, if I did that, I'd probably dropped the price to one fifty, because I think it's obnoxious that skiings as expensive as it is and as inaccessible as it is, UM, and I would love to see that change that, so they

were kind of going the opposite direction with Crossing. At least we have the you know, full raine and really interesting background coming Chase coming from aerospace, and access to crazy smart engineers and unique performance materials and practices coming from an industry that's very unlike skiing. UM, and and we are trying to do some really unique stuff in

this first year. I mean we start in June and we have two different models, three really that are absolutely exceptional at the top of their individual classes in the sport. And I'm looking forward to next year. Okay, but is your goal with Crossing to bring the price down and turn volume way up? Yeah? Eventually, UM, you know, I think it'll be some re engineering. I think there will be. There's a few steps, intermediary steps that have to be seen to first UM and obviously we have to be

economically viable to get there as well. So my long term goal is yes, is that, um you need a certain economic model to to make it work. But I think we're pointing in the right direction absolutely, and ideally I'd love to build race keys. Again. I think it's it's embarrassing that we don't have any American aid race skis, and uh, every other country as you alluded to before with you know, Atomic Rozzi, you know every company. Maybe Italy is the only comping that doesn't really have a

homegrown superpower race ski. But um, I want to build American made race skis and really kind of give the Americans advantage for once. Let's talk about the crossing skis that are available. Now, did you have a hand in developing those? I did everything from exact side cut, earlier rise, exact construction everything. Okay, so what makes them special and

different from what's presently on the market. Um, we'll focus on the one A team because that's the one that I did a good job on and got lucky as well. And I it's a twenty seven meter radius, so if you know anything about radius, that's a very long radius. That's a fist legal giant slalom radius ski basically, um and it's and so with that long radius, you're not going to get the same turn that you would on

an arc. But it's a one A team underfoot, which you wouldn't get that turn even if you made the shovel huge because there's so much torsional for so, I matched the point where there's traditional camera where the skis this way to the point where there's early rise, which

is really really subtle. When you stick the skis together and you push the base together, there's a tiny little slot of light that comes in between them earlier, and that's the radius that you use there, and where that is compared to the sidecut, how the ski is still getting wider, and then where that peeks out, and then how you use the actual tip curve, which is how the ski comes up off the snow. That's actually what you use to dictate your radius, is that that early

rise in the tip curve. So I'm cheating the system where I have a radius ski that you can ski seventy miles an hour on it and it doesn't jump around. It's not crazy. You can make little slow turns that aren't arcs, they're just slid. But it's super consistent and reliable and easy to balance on and forgiving works awesome and deep powder sloft chunky snow because it just doesn't hook you on the tail. You never get stuck in the back seat, you never get pitched forward. But then

still skis like a seventeen sixteen radio ski. When you tip it up because the actual initiation is coming from the curve of the ski versus the side cut, so it's it's nuanced and it's uh. I built it very traditionally, you know, nothing magical in it, which again allows me to reduce the cost down. Um. And yeah, I got lucky. I knew it would be a very good powder ski. I was confident there. What I was shocked at is how good it was on hard snow, on ice and

on groom trails. And the reason that it was much better than I thought was because I had never skied on a ski that was at that shallow of radius. So you know, the most you see is two three and even that is usually on a really stiff ski that's just for like high speed bombing and powder runs, you know, huge lines in Alaska and stuff like that. Um, this thing is a normal construction, fairly soft, but when you ski it on hard snow, it just absolutely rips turns.

I was my hip was on the ground for six g s turns in a row down a groom or first thing in this season, and I came out of that and I was like, it exceeded at every expectation I had on the harder still which my goal is always to build a ski that works on a big variety. There's lots of companies that build really good skis for one specific condition or type of skier. I want something that works for everybody, and I got really lucky this year. Okay,

conventional wisdom and needs to say you're not conventional. Is a hundred and eight team would be a powder ski, not a big mountain Alaska powder ski. And maybe you have a hundred and five or a hundred and six for cried your daily riders, hundred maybe for hard snow. You have something somewhere in the eighties. Hey, do you agree with that philosophy or is that horseship? Um? I

would say it's certainly not horseship, right. And the reason for that is just as I just stated right before that it was a lot of companies make skis that are good in one narrow segment. So if you love Stokely or you love Blizard or you love Atomic, you need five pairs of skis and you need the quiver you just said. I would even go narrowing that. I would go down to something the seventies for a hard ice.

If you're an East Coast ski and you're going up to Cannon or or Stow, you're gonna want something narrower the eighties. But but then everything else you said is virtually right, and you're gonna have a great time if you can bring five or six pairs of skis and switch from morning to mid lunch to afternoon. If you had a powder day in the morning, and what I believe that if you do it right you can have virtually you still kind of need two pairs. Um. I

skied on pretty firm snow. It didn't snow for about three weeks. There was smicy patches that got scratched down. I didn't I wouldn't say I enjoyed skiing on the one eight teens. If I was skiing in sugar Loaf when it hadn't snowed in two weeks, and you know that refrozen groom stuff where you barely leave a track in it when you're working right, the one teens probably

wouldn't have been a really enjoyable ski there. I would have dropped right down to a one seventies six underfoot I mean a seventy six underfoot um, but a much more mela radius than than a typical carving ski. And but beyond that that one een it covers from Big Mountain, Alaska. I mean, like shoots, it's a touring ski. It's super light. It's it's as light as some of the high level touring skis. Um you can ski it fast. He's getting crud junk. I have some videos of my buddy that

I mentioned before, just going crazy on the thing. And he's all of a d thirty five pounds, soaking wet, and he's one underfoot and he's shredding these hard wind baked, sun baked moguls um bouncing and shooting around and just landing. And they're always right where they belong. They're always right, you know, grips right under his foot. He's totally on it. And that that ski covers out here, it covers every day.

There's no other ski that I would ski on out here. Um, you know, on the East coast, you'd want something narrower. But I'd ideally like to get it down to two two pairs. Okay, there's a whole school of thought now. Really the business was changed by the Razzie one oh six, the Yellow Soul seven, And there are people who have been in the business a long time say this is not good for your knees to have wide skis. Do you have a lot on them? Yeah, it sounds like

live s tales stuff to me. I've heard a lot of people saying that, you know, we had FIST regulations, right we scrapped When I was on head, they made the skis now out of University of Salzburg, which is Austrian government controlled, and had we were kicking the crap out of Atomic, So of course the University of Salzburg came up with some data that said if you make the skis two millimeters wider, everyone's gonna be way more safe.

So we all had to scrap thousands of pairs of the fastest down will skis on the planet because they came up with some arbitrary data. And then two years later the injuries were worse and they said, up, we were wrong, and but you couldn't add edge with to make your skis wider. So we scrapped all those keys and started new and that helped Atomic because we're all back on level playing field. And then two years later they realized their data was garbage and they scrapped it.

So it's I think that's where that comes from I would say that a wide ski with a lot of sidecut because your shovel it becomes so big that it actually can hit and it has a huge surface area that if you hit a bump, or you hit loose snow or a pile of slough, um, you're gonna you're gonna get a huge reaction if it's not designed just right um. And that huge reaction oftentimes goes to your

knees and you're back. And so I would say a wide ski should have very little side cut, and you have to figure out a better way to make it turn. If you do that, I don't think it has any impact on safety. Okay, let's talk about materials. The big breakthrough was metal in the fifties and sixties. Then we went to fiberglass. Okay, we had the strato of the VR seventeen, but then we had Rozzie the Rock five fifty for gs that was metal. Then Solomon entered the business.

They had a cap ski. So the traditional thought now is you want metal for harder surfaces, for torsional rigidity. And then you talk about one eight teens. Conventually they will have no metal in them. What's your philosophy on materials and construction. Well, metal is not great for torsion in the sense of the properties itself. What it's good for is torsion and traditional layup is comes from shearing

effect of the of the material. So if you have a bunch of layers, those layers when they twist, they have to rub against each other. They don't just twist, uh you know, as one big chunk, they actually shear. And that's where you get your metal doesn't it has a hard bonding property. The surface has no other particles that it creates a really solid bonds of Tortionally, it affects it that way. But the property itself, metal twists

actually much easier than glued fiberglass. Fiberglass is the strongest for torstional uh control. Um. The reason we don't use metal traditionally, and you know wider skis is just weight. You know, it's just too it's just too damn much material. You'd use a piece of metal this wide and uh, you know, it's it's too much. But the other part, metals really damp and would metal together have a really

interesting frequency um dampening properties. So you know, we we always use you know goodwood cores in our wide skis, but we're using rubber instead of metal and fiberglass instead of metal. So fiberglass to control the tortion because as it gets wider, you can really control torson very effectively. Um, you don't add all that weight. And then he use rubber inserts around the edges in certain areas to to

dampen the vibration and have a damp ski. And Um again, I'm a believer that there's no one way to build a great ski. Um. Like I said, I'm the first to give credit to companies that have built great skis, and there's a lot of different ways to go about it. I want to do it in a way that's super consistent, gives people a huge range of of you know, conditions that the skis perform optimally on. And a ski that one eighteen I put a dude on it the other day.

He's never skied before, his first day on snow. He's one underfoot and had an awesome time. They switched into a black crow at lunch because he was curious, and he went immediately back to the team. He said that thing was garbage compared to this. It's so much easier to balance on this and control of the edges. So I think that done correctly, the sky is gonna work better in all conditions and for all skiers. And maybe that's optimistic, but it seems like it's working right now.

Let's just talk about course. Course, we're all would the breakthrough in the seventies was foam, then we went back to wood. Dina starts putting some foam stringers in what's your philosophy there? Yeah, I think I think hybrid um. Honestly, I think that's the application for carbon fiber and potentially other exotic materials as well as stringers vertical stringers of carbon fiber. Uh, think of like an H box of wood.

So an H of really thin but super dense wood, oak, beach poplar, you know, maple, um, ironwood, There's all kinds of wood that would be really interesting but super duper thin in an H. So you have an I beam type structure which adds a lot of the properties. Then fill the top and bottom of the H with foam with carbon stringers um. Ultimately, I've tried to have that core built for six years. Hasn't happened yet. I'm patients, so hopefully through. I believe that a hybrid core will

will be where we end up. Okay, but we'll foam break down like it did in the seventies or just not really a structural material. No, it's it's not. In seventies there was they had bad foam. I mean now they have aerospace foam that does you can have do anything as zero temperature fluctuations. It's that can't shatter. It has like a fifty thousand and a half life and

uh fully recyclable. I mean my goal ultimately is to have an exoskeleton ski, so carbon fiber um metal elastomer's frame and then foam injected and then metal top or potentially fiberglass or high density rubber polymer top over it, and then you'd have a ski that everything was dictated by this skeletal system underneath, and that's how all your flex was dictated. The foam dampens it, and the tops

just to protect it. When you're done with a ski, just heat it up, peel at apart, and everything is recyclable. I think that's it's a shame that nobody has taken that seriously. There's millions and millions and millions of cubic meters of waste coming out of the skins every single year because of that. Okay, if one listens to you in the landscape and the news and podcast et cetera, you seem to know everybody you have a relationship with

all these technical people. Did they come to you because if you were fame or is your personality such that people end up being drawn to you? I don't know, Um, I only know the results. I can't speak to the motivation. UM, I know a lot of people. I enjoy learning and talking about concepts and ideas. I'm not a talk about this person or gossip type person. I like talking about inspirational things that um haven't been done or you know,

creative ways to collaborate. So I think that's appealing. I think we're in an interesting time right now where you know, connectivity is much easier than it was ten years ago, right with the Internet. And I mean, you can get to anybody, so if somebody wants to get to me, they can get to me. So UM, but yeah, I feel very lucky to have, um had the relationships I've had and continue to grow because you know, I don't

know nearly enough yet. And uh, I learned from a lot of really smart people that I surround myself with all the time. Okay, but you're involved in your app Skio, you have the ski company, you have the educational thing. How many projects are you actively involved in and what are they? Thirteen? Uh? Really actively? Um, but there's another six or seven that are kind of where I'm a I'm a role player. Um, but not it's not my

primary thing. Uh. Snow Cookie, which is Skio Crossing Ski Company, I c L is my academy, Rivo sunglasses, goggles, helmet development, trying to make things safer and better. Um, my relationship up here in Big Sky which is Spanish peaks, Moonlight, forward facing real estate, all that stuff, Kuto which is a C too C booking platform, so you would book me to take you skiing here. And sky First is having to pay eight hundred bucks for an instructor. Um,

a really good dude. Uh. Friends started that and I help him as tech. My clothing company that I'm not officially involved with any longer because they're kind of plateau ng but um. Alchemist Alpine uh company out of l A cannabis and medical stuff around cancer research and swim Pals are wearable like a watch that strounding prevention. After losing my daughter, we we got really involved in that and want to stop that from happening, so we were

inventing some new stuff. I'm working with the Nest guys Jamie simmon Off and guys at at Amazon for all

that snow Bonn, which is the indoor ski hall. I'm a shareholder and it's outside of Denver now, but we're working on partnering with resorts and replicating that so that in these population hubs in Houston and Dallas and Atlanta, you can have these kids who would never be exposed to skiing go in and for thirty bucks experienced skiing and then package something together to have them go up to a local area for a tenth the cost and

UH and get out. Their APEX is UH Technologies company that I'm in through my roommate at c v A, and they optimize UM everything from data security now that especially with COVID, everyone's going digital. It's a huge new push in that space. And their Ninja's flow code is Tim Armstrong's company was the CEO at A O L when I was there ten years ago, and we became friends and that's an advanced QR code. It's the fastest, quickest scanning QR code. So like now when you go

into restaurant, your menu is that QR code. He has those that take you to a flow page that can do incredible stuff. He's just a wizard. Romp and Roost. We're building kids stuff because we have six six kids alive. We would have seven if we had lost my daughter, um parents stuff these you know, uh packing plays and travel accessories. When you go to a restaurant, how come it's such a pain in the ass with the high

chairs and all that. And then Zortech, which is a shoe company that's doing smart shoes, so very similar to um to Skio where you get all his data out of your skiing the smart shoes, I want to put in Schuman's residents in of the shoe with a p c oh so you're basically like you're walking around with your feet in the grass or feet in the dirt all day because I think this electromagnetic field disturbances we're getting right now are kind of messing with a lot

of people and so and then at the same time as giving you Shuman's Residents all day in your shoes. They're also giving you, you know, har rate variability and steps and stress levels and stress patterns. Hey, when you walk down this street you're super stressed every day, Maybe don't walk down that street. So, um, it's a that's there's about like I said, six more, but um, those are those are the main ones that I'm pretty heavily

involved with. Okay, how do you have the time? How do you have the time to have even one of those in ski? Those those fit into the six percent of the time that I'm not dealing with my kids and and uh and wife and eating drinking wine. But are you actively involved? Needless to say, having your name attached to something is beneficial to an enterprise, But to what those are? Those are all? Those are all very active.

Those are things where I have calls, maybe not really, but very active all the way from R and D to marketing to partnerships and getting things lined up, I mean everything. Those are Those are heavy involvement. And I'm I'm efficient, I am. I mean, you know, I dropped the ball all the time and every one of them. I'm very upfront. I'm like, look if I if I tell you I'm not not getting on that call. I'm not getting on the call. If you want to go find somebody else, fine, But like you know, so I'm

open because I don't have the ability. I'm not a nine to five or I have. I literally fit that into the ten percent of the time where I'm not managing my kids and all that. I mean we have we have three kids who are two are under in the house, and it's there's not a lot of time that I can get this. This is a miracle that I've had this time. My wife's being an angel right now. Okay, just to go a little deeper and then just a couple more topics. Uh, what's the difference between Scio and

this product that is being heavily hyped now Carve? Yeah, car I mean honestly, I love what Carve was doing. I've been in conversation with them. I know. The problem with that is their mechanisms. So they're doing it on the boot, They're doing it in the sole of the boot. You know, I'm never one to hate on anybody, but to disrupt somebody's boot, you have to, you know, insert this thing underneath your footboard. You're do what you're talking about.

If you're doing your boots, right, there's no space in there to put that in there, so you're doingfications. But then but then also you're only able to capture certain data because the boot only does certain things. And what we did ours is three sensors. It's one on either ski just in front of the binding, and then one on the center of your chest. So we're talking about rotational force. It uses your phone and all the telemetry on your phone as well to have all that um

but we can do rotation foraft movement. They do that through sensors in your foot. But again, you're you're getting When I skied on carve, I ripped fifteen ridiculously hard g s turns, perfect balance, you know, in and out consecutive. It said that I was sucking and then I slid a bunch of turns, just kind of bopping along super low edge angle, and it was like, great job, great job. So I think they have work to do on their

algorithm engine. I think there's a place for it. I think a ton of people are going to benefit from it, but they're in a they went a route that was more difficult to achieve what I think ultimately is the goal, which is to have people have really good, clean, objective data that represents what it's supposed to represent. I can tell you from my experience I was skiing well, and it was saying I was sucking, and then vice versa.

Ours is all built around you know. The algorithm is is legit, there's no if you're skiing better, it knows you're skiing better. And the in the centerpiece on your chest is really really important based because as you know, skiing is so much of it's how you're rotating, how you're initiating, how your foraft balance is shifting through a turn, what your skis are doing vibrationally, if your edges are matched, um,

what your pressure is on either edge. We can get all that, um, you know, very easily, as well as you know all the other things that they can get. Okay, I grew up during the ski boom. Okay, everybody skied in the sixties and early seventies. Having lived long enough, I know there are other of things. You know, there was a snowboard boom. Snowboard is actually decreasing slightly, not that just did a big thing. How do we reinvigorate skiing? Um?

I think accessibility. Uh, if you look at the barriers to entry and skiing. It's no wonder that we have like an eight percent atrician rate, so eight out of tend people who ski for the first time don't try it again. Um that's been flat for about the last

thirty five years. So UM, that's a problem if you're if you're charging people enormous amounts the snow Bonn, So if you combine just and this is a big part of it, right, This is why all these projects become doable is because they're not these off on tangent silo

little things. They're all connected. Snow Bonn is an indoor ski hall that allows people to learn to ski in about thirty minutes, from never having put ski boots on before to being able to go up onto a resort in ski blue runs snowplow, turn either direction, hockey stop

on either side in twenty minutes for thirty dollars. So I want to replicate that in population hubs, and I want to tie it to the resorts because the lifetime value of a skier at a resort for Veil, for you know, Ask and whoever, that lifetime value is enormous. They can afford to give them a break for that first time, to get them interested, to get them psyched,

um get them hooked if you will. So that whole package is one piece that ties in with Crossing, because I'm building special skis that actually work better on the carpet because it is this crazy, you know, big inside treadmill with carpet on it or plastic key carpet, and the skis don't work well. They're just using typical skis de tuning them and like, okay, give it a go. They need skis designed for that. So we're doing that

with Crossing. My goal over the next four years is to reduce the cost of skis um go direct to customers. I mean we see retails going to the tank right, retails tanking everywhere, and COVID only accelerated that. But there's no reason you need to go into a ski shop to buy skis like to just asn't like with thirty day money that guarantee. Here's the skis two hundred bucks. Instead of selling them to a retailer for bucks and then they sell them to you for seven hundred bucks,

we just sell them straight to you. We can make our margins, everything works, and you pay two hundred bucks, so reduce the cost of everything incrementally. There. Um, you know they've already done certain steps, the Icon Pass, Epic Pass, those are I think incremental steps in the right direction. I honestly think there's gonna be a new boom of very small resorts. You need traffic for that, and that hasn't supported that in the past because we've had no

growth in the sport. But once these things are put together, there's these adventure parks that are incredibly profitable in Europe and they drive people to these other more more exclusive, more expensive involved operations. I think that when we spool out thirty five fifty hundred snow bonds in these population hubs and then we can run a ski resort that only operates from December eighteen till March and it has

two lifts. You're only accommodating people who are the first three years of skiing, and then once they're better, sure graduate up to some others. But as you know, I mean, Christina Cosnick, Lindsey Vaughan, you know myself, steen mark on your person. They grew up on mountains. There were no bigger than my driveway is like, I mean, we're talking a couple hundred vertical feet you don't need, uh, you know, the Pyrenees to to go out and enjoy skiing and

have a great time. So all those things I think play together. I think the industry has been remarkably inefficient at converting new skiers. And you know, but look at ale stock prices. I mean, they're doing all right, so I can't really pick on them too much. But I think that's you know, you go through the early life complaining about all these people doing things wrong, and at some point you gotta step up and start realizing somebody's just got to do it. So that's the phase of

it now. And again that parlays with vos. You know, everything everything I work on is all aligned in terms of that stuff, so it ends up being a bit more efficient that way. Okay, very quickly, too quick tips piece of advice for people who are experienced skiers technique wise, Um yeah, I mean to me, upper lower body separation is the biggest conundrum for people is with sidecut skis.

Now you can commit down the hill so much more if your skis finishing a turn, coming around and you're used to coming up, becoming neutral and then initiating your new turn and going down and making a turn. You've seen it in World Cup for years now. But I think the exciting thing is get on a really good ski. Stokely makes a really good carving ski. We make, I believe the best carving ski. UM A bunch of companies make a good one. And by good I mean super reliable.

It's never gonna do anything crazy on you, because what we're talking about is finishing your turn. As you're coming across the fall line, your upper body goes over the top of your skis in a low position. So for that little moment, you're basically just letting go. You're relaxing, your knees are super bent, your ass is really far back. You're just traveling over your skis straight down the hill.

As that happens, you're putting your place self in a position where you can back up a ski edge angle that's really high, and it's basically upper lower bodies sepreasure. You're continuing to turn one way while your body is going over the top, and then your edges switch really quickly from one edge to the other, and the skis initiate so quickly that they dive down underneath you and

pick you back up. And I think for experienced gears that's a really something they haven't felt before, and it's it changes entirely the sport because you're in a long legged, really powerful position all the time. The only time where you're in that crunched up awkward phase, there's no pressure on You're just flying down the hill. And for me, that's how you know that that's the most exciting thing

about carving skis. Okay, needless to say, you can make a deal with any of the major companies and endorsement deal and get a big check. Are you into it with cross and not only to make the skis for the upside? And to what degree? You know if these some of these figures are published, but we don't know what you did with the money. How are you doing financially and how are your compatriots who were successful in the circuit doing financially? Um? I mean I'm still working,

so I'm not doing that good. Um. But it granted, my kids and wife cost me a lot of money. They know how to they know how to spend it. But um, you know, I think we're we're comfortable. I'm very fortunate that I do things that I love to do and I don't do them for money. But I'm fortunate enough to be valuable enough to companies where I can get compensated in a way that makes things makes

the wheel turn. Um. But you know the other skiers generally, Um, you know, if you weren't number one in the world and winning a lot of races, your work in day job. Now, I mean Europe is different. Their icons. They they get sort of taken care of because they're in these semi you know, socialist type countries where they get a lodge or they're they do different things. They're kind of set up. But they also have such a different culture over there

where it's not an economic ladder. They just they like to do things. So they just run a restaurant and host people because they like to Um. But you know, I could if you got any tips, I could certainly use some cash. But um, I'm doing okay, Okay, do you regret not going to college? No, Now, I went to lots of colleges. I just didn't go to college per se. Um. I was at colleges all over the country and all over the world. Um, but no, no, I'm a I'm an easy study like coaches that I

was uncoachable. I think that's not really true. I think they were just beating their head against the wall and something that I was very committed to, and unfortunately it didn't align with what they wanted me to do. But I learned things really quickly. More or less, stuff that I need to figure out, I can figure out really quickly. And as I said, I'm I have some of the best mentors in the world, the smartest people, um, that

I've found, and I learned really quickly from them. Okay, you've gone on record for political issues and how you view the country. What is your view of the overall state of the United States? And do we have any hope? Uh? Yeah, we have hope, um, not a lot. But you know, the for me, the problem is that we've we've diverged away from sort of the concept. The concept was that the people would sort of semi govern that we would.

But when you have three million people with hugely diverse backgrounds and priorities and all this stuff, you have to modify the system. It's it can't be a you know, nationally governed, it has to be stay governed. I think micro micro governing bodies need to take more responsibility and and and have flexibility there Um. That to me is

is where our salvation lies is. You know, you can have different views, you can have different philosophies and different lifestyles and different stuff, but it still has to fall within the parameters of the national That was the philosophy in the beginning. But it wasn't so real then because communication took three weeks to get a letter from Colorado back to Washington. But um or Virginia. But in this case, you know, you just have to we can't have this

this crazy um. You know, these extremist groups that that stuff is garbage. I don't know the solution there. UM that that's problematic because there really are hate groups and then they just they're just angry and want to do damage. But some of that comes to um a cultural um. Feel good about what you're doing, and feel good about everybody.

And that's because we've sucked for quite a while. I mean, I'm not a US hater, but I find it really funny that people say we're the best country in the world when they haven't really been to a lot of other countries. I've been to a lot of countries, and I can say I think Daniel Tosh says, it is that have you ever been to Fiji, like maybe you

go there. You've been to New Zealand, like you know, universal healthcare, like you could show up there and break your leg and they take care of everything for you know, Bill is not perfect healthcare, like you know. I think there's a lot of things that unfortunately our government is

incapable of doing because of the structure. And I don't know if that's going to change, But on a state and micro level, I think as we transition the renewable energies and we kind of I think we're gonna see a massive influx of job creation and and hopefully more productive direction than we've been for the last two hundred years. Um with you know, fossil fuels revolution that was that was inherently terminal, like it didn't you know, capitalism is

terminal in and of itself. You can't always be uh um, you know, a capitalist culture exclusively. There always has to be some balance. We already have that. The irony is that people ignore the fact that we've been we have socialist programs. We have since the beginning. We've we've always

had them. So it's just finding the balance there and hopefully um getting people excited to embrace the differences of our country because unfortunately or unfortunately, there's always gonna be huge variants in our in our people, in our in this country. Final question, this is one of perception for those of us who follow ski racing. Yes, you had that instant success with the K two fours, You did very well in the two thousand two Olympics. Then there was all this hope, in this hype which we get

every four years in the Olympics United States. You were the golden boy. The success was not there, needless to say, Also, what I learned today, you're talking about certain equipment issues which were not well publicized. In addition, you've gone your own way in a country that thrives on group paint, group think, but all the pushing forward is by individuals

who were frequently hated in them lauded. In addition, you commented did the play by play so to speak of the Olympics, and as opposed to being bobbed BIATI just being a national cheerleader. You got into the specifics of racing and took a lot of flak for that. So the question is, how do you feel about your perception of yourself. Do you think it should be changed? Do you care if it's changed? Do you bothered if it's

not changed. No, I'm not bothered and I don't care. Um, you know, I feel like that was a big learning experience for me. It was oh six right right. I was petulant. I take responsibility for my own behavior. But it was also not an anomaly. I didn't. It wasn't like that was my time where I blew up. I was that way all my entire life. And the fact was I was unapologetic. I just I said, look, I did my best. I won the I was winning the combined by three seconds, right, ted end up winning the

goal there. I was three seconds ahead of him after the first run of slalom, and I was disqualified. Like, you know, there's things that happened that they could have changed everything there they didn't. Um. You know, when I walked away from that, I was definitely uh you know, I was immature and I was not prepared for what I was dealing with. I was the top gun on

World Cup. I had I was taking of all the demands and press and everything else, and I just I wasn't good enough and I needed to improve and I knew that so UM when I came back after the OH nine semi retirement into two thousand and ten, UM, I was really proud of how I'd evolved in that

four year span. And I came back a different type of person, much more capable, much more broad skill set, capable of dealing with real adult things and and being clear about my prerogatives, but also much more um effectively talking about what I felt was important and how I could make that work with your average you know viewer who's just an American who wants you to say, go America, where the best? So I'm gonna win for you, guys

like I understood that in that time frame. And it took that failure in OH six and all the fallout of that to learn. I mean, it's just the reality is, you learned through those struggles and and uh, I've been super I wouldn't change a thing about that. It was an ass kicking at the time, but it's not the first as kicking I've taken. It certainly won't be the last.

So to come into ten and win three medals and really kind of give the American people what they wanted in my on my own terms and with that expression and my my comfort level. Unfortunately I missed that stop on the on the attributes trade train when I was being created that I didn't feel satisfaction about that part of it, like I proved anyone wrong or anything. I just felt good that I had evolved and hopefully matured a little bit where I was more capable and not

making the same stupid mistakes i'd make made before. Yes, but at the Olympics, Lindsey Vaughan was the heroine with one gold medal, and you had a better performance than anyone had ever had in the Winter Olympics skiing as a male, and they gave you a fraction of the attention. But as as you said, no, as you said, there's nothing, especially American culture, putting somebody on the pedestal and then they want to knock the pedestal out, you know, and then they want to build you back up, and then

they want to knock the pedestal. The thing that was interesting about that is because I retired in oh nine and I didn't start my Olympic run until August. I mean, I was fatten out of shape and had no skis, no technician, no nothing going into the World Cup season. Um, they didn't have any time before I was six, and that summer going into six, I was on a cover of Time, Newsweek, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated. You know, that was the build up, That was the pedestal. They had

no time. Nobody could scramble. They'd already they'd already put Lindsay as their person. They were pot committed to her. So the fact that she delivered, they were on board. They were like, yeah, see, we were right. She's our American hero and they had for me. I was a side note. Because they had they couldn't validate, you know, not the individuals, but mainstream press likes to be right right, So the fact that I did well didn't help them.

They were They weren't upset individually, but as a as an industry, they were upset because they didn't have the scoop. They didn't have it, you know, set up right to capitalize on that. And so, um, it's exactly what I expected. And as I said, I was very aware of that by that point, and they didn't upset me at all. I was really proud and excited to have you know, like I said, matured and got better and then delivered.

I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are, how mature you are, It comes down a hundreds of the second. You know how tight those races were. And at the end of the day, those performances that I put down there my the actual skiing I did to get that gold medal in the combined what I did in that slow on course was was nothing short of a miracle. I mean I was that was the that was the pinnacle of what you'd

hoped for of yourself in an Olympic environment. And uh yeah, to do it after having let people down and let myself down the way I didn't know six was was a miracle. And then obviously fourteen I pulled off, you know, a bronze medal that I was as proud of as any medal that i'd ever you know, had in any event. Why is that the night before my brother it's supposed to go to that Olympics, that he was going to

go as a snowboarder. It would have been the first one we've been at together, he passed away into um and before I should have won the downhill, I was crushing guys in the training runs conditions change, we could. We didn't have the skis to be competitive on the bottom. I was losing a second and a half on the bottom just going straight across, you know, eight hundred yards um and I end up losing in my stronger events, and the super gew was kind of the last one.

And uh, the night before I took my goggle strap off my helmet and I replaced it with with one of those um physio bands, you know, those bands like the red and green that you used to stretch out, And so I replaced it with one of those. And I thought about doing that for ten years. I don't know it's I put it in the wind tunnel. We tested. We knew that that made a difference, and I said, look, tomorrow,

a hundredth is going to make the difference. And so I replaced that for the first time in four hundred and thirty World Cup races, I replaced it and tied for third place. So one hundredth slower and I have no medal. And I come out of the Olympics, you know, dealing with all the press of no medals. Just that one bronze medal saves all that stuff. But also it was it was really indicative of my level of of commitment and you know, and ingenuity and and and self reliance.

I mean, no one did it. I was the only dude in the race with a rubberized goggle strap that in a wind tunnel, I know, makes point oh six percent difference, which was theoretically in a in a minute race, which that was is a second. So and I and I one hundred slower and I get no medal. So you tie for second, you're one hundred slower, you just got a bronze, no problem. You tie for third, one slower,

you get nothing. Bronze medal is important. And at that point I was the oldest Olympic medalist in history globally. Um it was. It was massive. And to know that all other things excluded that goggle strap that I've done for the first time in my whole life, uh made the difference, got me a metal. Um was was interesting and obviously, uh you know, I felt like, uh, you know, it was it was a testament to my commitment and the representation of my my commitment to getting better and

not leaving any stones unturned. Okay, And the comments that you got in reaction to your play by play will you do that again? Did that hurt? What was the blowback from the people on the inside who hired you. No, they loved it. I mean we got way more positive feedback than negative. Um, because anyone who was a skier appreciated it because it actually instructed them and formed them of what was going on. They found that really educational and interesting and much more than just a cheerleader. Um,

which was my intent. I mean, honestly, I feel like one of the biggest failings of of this industry has been education, has been informing people, you know, democratizing information and UM. So that's where the way I approached it. I after that Olympics, it was live prime time in the US. I was a big one for me to just know that I could do and be there and execute. But afterwards I was like, I'll do it again, but you're gonna pay me ten times as much and you're

gonna fly my family. I can't be away from my family for three weeks. And in China, Korea, UM, And I think they see it as talent is more or less interchangeable, and in this case, um, you know, they hired Lindsay, which I'm I love Lindsay so I'm looking forward to seeing what she can do. And where are all your globes and medals and trophies, uh, bunch or in the Ski Museum in New Hampshire. Actually a buddy zoom I was on a zoom call earlier. He was

there skiing at Cannon. He zoomed us um from in there. But I don't know. A bunch of them are all around different places. I don't. I don't think I have any in my house here, so it's kind of like a musician who keeps their grammy in the bathroom. In any event, body, I so much for talking with me. It's really been great. You've been able to answer questions that I've never seen either asked or answered in all of the ski media. So I really appreciate that. I

appreciate it. Great to talk to you. Okay, hopefully I can see on the hill one day. And I'm one of those people. I do have those five piers of ski so I know what you're talking about. If you've got one pier of skis, it would work. I'm all ears. I'll get this already right out until next time. This is Bob left Sex