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.
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.
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.
When I was little, I spent a lot of time by myself. When other kids were in school, I was skiing and thinking about things. I was alone on the mountain.
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.
My grandfather was very into horse racing, and I found some of his old journals and got into it from there. It has a lot of parallels to skiing. It’s a fun lifestyle, being around the racetrack.
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.
