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.
Some of them I probably would like. Some of my fans probably beat their wives or run over little kids and they just happen to watch me on TV and like the way I ski.
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.
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 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.
