At this point in my career, I have the privilege of choosing my partners. In the beginning, you more or less take what comes in the door – or what matches up with your brand.
My team has been very unreceptive about the fact that I consistently show them that I train slightly differently than they do, that I consistently show them that I am in better shape for ski racing than anyone else on the team.
Obviously, you always want to win, but you want to win by skiing a race that you’re proud of and you feel like you really challenged yourself and left it all out there.
One of the really important things about the Olympics is, to enjoy yourself, you have to accept that it’s different and feed off the enthusiasm of everyone and the inspiration and hopefully that will elevate your performance.
I would just fly off jumps and go 40 or 50 meters when I was 6 years old – break skis, smash my goggles and get a bloody nose and go crawl inside for a little while and then come back out and ski more in the afternoon.
