Turin, Italy 2006 Winter Olympic Games

Olympic Freestyle Skiing Analysis

SAULZE D'OULX, Italy – There were high hopes for the U.S. men's freestyle moguls team, with a strong possibility that they could dominate the podium and sweep the medals. It didn't happen.

Looking back, their potential might have been over-hyped. I had higher hopes for them because they were so strong coming in, with Jeremy Bloom, Travis Mayer and Toby Dawson, who became their best hope because he could hit the bottom jump at high speeds and throw a sick cork 720. He's comfortable with that kind of rowdy skiing, and that's how he skied Wednesday when he won the bronze medal. He's a true freestyler.

Australia's Dale Begg-Smith won the gold, and Finland's Mikko Ronkainen got the silver, but Bloom finishing sixth was tragic because he's the best moguls skier I've seen in a long time. He's so talented.

He had a good qualifying run. He was going really fast and looked a little wild, but that's what you have to do in the Olympics. For some reason, he wasn't willing to hit that bottom jump at full speed, and you can't pull back there, which he did. He did the cork 720 at the bottom which was good, but when everybody's doing the same jump off the bottom and you do it a little less, it's over. At that point, you're in the judges' hands, so if you don't come out with a clear, dominating run, you won't win a medal.

There is a huge difference between doing a difficult jump off the top of the run as opposed to off the bottom. A difficult jump off the bottom is three times as hard as a difficult jump off the top because you need to be traveling at mach speed to hit the trick off the bottom. Slowing down means you lose time and points. So, when you hit the bottom, the chances of messing up and landing on your head are twice as great. Unfortunately, they don't give you extra points for doing a difficult trick off the bottom jump. When Bloom won the World Cup title in 2002, he did it by doing a difficult trick off the top jump and a basic trick off the bottom.

In the last year or so, mogul skiers have started to figure out how to do the difficult jumps off the bottom, and that's what hurt Bloom chances Wednesday.

Overall, it was a great contest, but I have a lot of biases on where the emphasis should be placed on a jump's degree of difficulty. Clearly, Begg-Smith did a great job in winning the gold medal. He has incredible form and makes clean jumps. Silver medalist Ronkainen skied out of his head. Some people thought he should have been standing on top of the podium. It seemed really subtle, but the trick Dawson did on the top (720 mute grab) was twice as hard as what the other guys were doing off the top jump, and it's three times as hard as what Begg-Smith did, but the way the scoring is set up, you get no extra points for grabs. I give Dawson a lot of credit for doing a trick nobody else was doing. He should have been higher up in the standings with that incredible performance.

My favorite run of the day was by Canada's Alexandre Bilodeau, who finished 11th. He laid down an awesome run, but he had a small mistake when he landed off the bottom jump. He did a back flip with two twists and then a cork 1080 (three rotations, off axis) on the bottom, but he didn't hit it clean. I thought he should have been on the podium. The magnitude and the degree of difficulty of his run is what the 2010 gold medalist will do. It's that far ahead.

Begg-Smith's style is a credit to his coach, Steve Desovich, one of the legendary coaches in the sport, who was a dominant World Cup champion in the 1980s before the Olympics were an option for freestyle skiers. Begg-Smith has a combination of everything – great technique, smooth in the turns and textbook jumps – and that's what it takes to win. He played it safe and smart Wednesday, as his hill run was not up to what he's capable of doing. Luckily for him, he has gotten to a point where that's good enough to win, but he did leave it open for someone else.

I like my freestyle skiing perfect and innovative. Begg-Smith didn't push the envelope as far as doing anything special, but did what the judges have been scoring and he did it incredibly well. He deserved the gold medal.

Updated on Wednesday, Feb 15, 2006 7:59 pm, EST

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