WHISTLER, British Columbia — Imagine jumping out of a 40-story building and gliding the length of a football field—and then some. In the large hill competition, ski jumpers soar for 410 feet from a hill 460 feet high in the air—at 60 miles per hour. It’s the closest thing to flying the Olympics has to offer. And the men of U.S. Ski Jumping love it.
When it comes to Olympic sports, not every team gets the fame and fortune. The U.S. Ski Jumping team is a young group of athletes gambling everything they’ve got on a dream. Without funding from the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, these competitors have forged a program on their own, and put the rest of their lives on hold for the sport they love.
“It’s definitely tough for us because we have not so much support and finances are pretty rough for our team,” said Anders Johnson of Park City, Utah. “But we do the best we can. We are still young and working hard for it.”
Young they are, indeed. With the 2006 Olympic games under his belt, Johnson is the team’s sole veteran; he’s just 20 years old.
“It’s kind of weird thinking I’m a veteran and I’m only 20,” Johnson said. “But I think having that experience four years ago is a pretty big advantage.”
Nicholas Alexander has the best placing for Team USA jumping to 28th place in the Ski Jumping Large Hill Individual Qualification Round at Whistler Olympic Park during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. (United Press International)
Nick Alexander of Lebanon, N.H., is 21. And Peter Frenette of Saranac Lake, N.Y., is the youngest male on the entire U.S. Olympic team. He’ll turn 18 on Wednesday.
"I'm one of the youngest to do it, so that's good, looking forward to my career," Frenette said. "It's just a starting point. Hopefully, [I'll] keep building from the Olympics and get better and hopefully be one of the best one day."
After qualifying last week for the medal round in the normal hill competition, the team missed out on the top-30 final. Frenette and Alexander tied for 41st with scores of 106.5 on their first-round jumps, while Johnson finished 49th of 60.
For American ski jumpers, the biggest hurdle to success is money. They’re not fully funded by the USSA, which finances America’s other ski and snowboard teams.
Bill Marolt, CEO of the USSA, said he felt there were better “opportunities” in events like Nordic combined and cross-country after assessing all of their programs.
“We continue to work with a group of volunteers and, actually, our ski jumpers that are here are doing reasonably well,” Marolt said. “So there is some light at the end of that tunnel.”
Without full support from the USSA, the ski jumping team has had to conjure up the money themselves.
“That basically comes down to finding your own sponsorship money, your own coach,” Johnson said. “And it’s really difficult to do with how the economy is now.”
Three years ago, a handful of the top U.S. juniors hired a coach and started a private ski jumping team called Project X, which operates independently of the USSA.
“Thanks again to one and all who have made the generous contributions enabling us to provide this opportunity to your American athletes,” ends the Project X 2009 Season Highlight wrap-up on SkiJumpingUSA.com. “Too bad the US Ski Team can’t.”
Without any major sponsors, all of their expenses have had to come out of their families’ pockets.
“Everything is done by mom and dad,” Johnson said. “I mean every trip, every piece of equipment is bought and paid for by ourselves, every plane ticket, everything. So that’s a huge sacrifice for us. And it’s an even bigger sacrifice for our families to work that extra bit to keep our Olympic dream alive.”
U.S. Speedskating, who also faced funding woes after their biggest commercial sponsor, Dutch Bank DSB, went bankrupt, found a savior in Stephen Colbert. He motivated his Comedy Central Colbert Nation to raise over $300,000 for the team, bringing them invaluable amounts of press in the process.
The U.S. ski jumpers haven’t been so lucky.
“Ski jumping isn’t exactly a huge sport in the U.S.,” Johnson said. “It’s kind of a constant struggle for us to get it well known.”
Without marquee names like Apolo Anton Ohno and Shani Davis, who have both medaled in multiple Olympics including Vancouver—Ohno won silver in 1500m short track and Davis won gold in 1000m long track—it’s hard for a team to get funding. And without funding, it’s hard to find the time and resources to train at an elite level.
Johnson said it costs his family over $20,000 a year to compete on the professional circuit. All of the team’s jumpers hold down jobs during their off-season to help out. Last summer, Frenette worked at an ice cream stand. Johnson cut grass and laid sod for his dad’s property management company, and Alexander washed dished at Sawhill Restaurant in Lebanon, N.H.
And thanks in part to the financial strain, the ski jumpers have had to make a tough choice: ski jumping or school? Unlike sports like swimming, where athletes typically continue their elite training at the college level, ski jumpers don’t have that option.
All three team members have chosen jumping.
“It’s hard when I don’t know if there is going to be funding or anything like that,” Frenette said. “It’s kind of like a leap of faith.”
Frenette’s mother insisted he apply to college as a safety net.
“It’s kind of a toss up between going to college and continuing ski jumping, making all those sacrifices like my mom and dad continue to pay,” he added. “It’s definitely difficult.”
“But I definitely plan on continuing,” Frenette said, despite his lingering doubts over the financial costs. “I love this sport too much to stop.”
Johnson put it this way: “For me school is waiting,” he said. “You can go to college anytime you want—you can’t go to the Olympics at 56.”
Alexander is also putting his hopes of being a pilot on hold to continue jumping.
“That was a really tough decision because I got into a pretty good school that was a sure fire way of being a pilot,” he said. “Do I pursue this dream or that dream?”
But all the jumpers are grateful to their families and communities, who have allowed them to continue chasing the dream.
“Without our parents’ supports, like any athlete but especially with us, without our parent support we wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” Johnson said.
The team is hopeful that they will continue to grow in the years to come, pointing to the U.S. Nordic combined team—who compete in both ski jumping and cross-country—as role models. Nordic combiners Billy Demong, Todd Lodwick and Johnny Spillane once faced similar struggles like national disinterest and a lack of funding. But the team has now medaled at World championships, and Spillane won America’s very first Olympic Nordic combined medal on Valentine’s Day when he took silver in the Normal Hill/10km competition.
“If the Nordic combiners did it, we can do it,” Alexander said.
“They’re doing a good job, because they don’t have much to work with,” Spillane told me after accepting his silver medal at the Whistler Victory Ceremony on Feb. 14. “It’s a David and Goliath story really.”
Spillane said the sport has become extremely popular in other parts of the world, with European countries pumping large sums of money into jumping programs. For example, the Austrian team spent 500,000 euros, or roughly $700,000, on a two-story competition tour bus. The fledgling American team is unable to keep up.
“Out team has gone through a similar sort of thing,” Spillane said of Nordic combined. “They should know that they are every bit as talented as we are. It takes a long time. I was at my first Olympics 12 years ago.”
Just 12 years and four Olympics later, Spillane, 29, finally has a medal.
But growing the sport could also mean including women. Ladies’ ski jumping isn’t an Olympic event; it debuted at the World Championships in 2009, and American Lindsey Van won a gold medal. But despite lobbying for its inclusion in the Vancouver games, the International Olympic Committee decided against it.
Marolt is hopeful for the sport’s future and is “optimistic that women’s ski jumping can be included in 2014,” he said.
Johnson, whose sister Alissa is also a ski jumper, agreed.
“When my sister and I started jumping, it was both our goals to compete in the Olympics,” Johnson said. “And it still is.”
But for now, the three members of U.S. Ski Jumping are excited to be at the games, and are looking forward to jumping well. They’re not competing for the fame or the glory, and certainly not for the multi-million dollar endorsement deals some other athletes enjoy.
“We’re doing it for ourselves,” Johnson said. "It's awesome, it's a great experience. So far these Olympics have run really well and really smooth, and everybody's having a good time."
The U.S. ski jumping team competed yesterday in the qualifying round of the large hill event. Alexander and Frenette advanced to the first round of the medal competition, which takes place today.
UPDATE: Peter Frenette finished in 32nd place, just missing the finals in the large hill ski jumping competition at Whistler Olympic Park. The top 31 jumpers moved into the final. Nick Alexander placed 40th.
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