There’s been times when I’ve been in really tough shape at the top of the course. Talk about a hard challenge right there. I mean, if you ever tried to ski when you’re wasted, it’s not easy.
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.
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.
People want athletes to cater to their image of what an athlete should be, but they also want them to fail so they can feel like their screwups are all right.
In some ways, that’s the story of my season – when I wasn’t making big mistakes, I was winning races and being on the podium. And when I made mistakes I was still fourth or fifth, just off the podium.
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.
