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Eric Bergoust: Full Medal Jacket
March 27, 2009
By DAVE REESE
The picture is one of those classic photographs that most families have in their photo albums.
It's a shot of the child early in life, a neophyte at a sport that perhaps later defines the child's adulthood.
For Eric Bergoust, that photo is a shot of him freefalling off the his family's house onto a stack of mattresses.
Bergoust has come a long way since that photo was taken almost 30 years ago. The Missoula native won a gold medal in aerials at the 1998 Olympics and is currently ranked No. 1 in World Cup aerial standings.
Bergoust, 40, was home-schooled while growing up in the Bitterroot Valley. He grew up wanting to emulate Evel Knievel or become a fighter pilot. He ended up being the world's best aerial skier. Bergoust grew up jumping at Big Mountain and Lost Trail, throwing his body over cliffs or hucking 360s off of knolls.
Winning the Olympic gold medal put Bergoust in the spotlight, but early in his career he wasn't that enamored with being an Olympic champion. He figured that a better gauge of a person's talents was the World Cup, which measures your performance over an entire year, not just one or two jumps. That changed after he won the gold medal in 1998 in Nagano.
"I knew if I had the goal to win the Olympics, everything else would come with it," he said.
Bergoust, it could be said, was one of the fathers of the modern aerial ski jumping. When he started jumping competitively in 1988 there were certain standards for jumping that today would be considered extremely low.
"Winning has given me a lot of freedom to influence the sport," he said. "It's allowed me to build jumps that I like and jump on them. That's been the biggest part of it; influencing the sport and helping see what direction it goes."
He's not afraid to admit that he's been surpassed by younger, more talented jumpers with experience not just in aerials - but in sport itself.
Throughout his career, from jumping off his house onto mattresses, the self-taught Bergoust focused on the physics of flight - how to do aerials properly. Having been home-schooled, he didn't have backgrounds in many other sports. "I didn't know about competition, pushing yourself self beyond limits," he said. "I only learned those while I was jumping. It was a long, slow process."
Regardless of the sport, world-class athletes know the minor details that make the difference in a podium finish or being sent home early. It was these minor mistakes that Bergoust said cost him the world championships in 2001, the Olympics in 2002 and the world championships in 2003.
"These were a result of not being familiar enough with what sport is all about," Bergoust said. "I was just an aerial guru. I formed bad habits that I had to spend a lot of time trying to break. Out of 18 years in competition, five were good; the rest of the time I was playing catch up."
If he had it to do all over again, Bergoust would have studied the science of competition as much as he studied the physics of jumping. "As many skills as I have, I should have won a lot more often," he said. "I look back on my career as having fallen short more times than not. Looking back, there are so many things I could have done better."
An aerial ski jumper designs their tricks from the bottom up. You start with one back flip and no twists. Once you have a consistent takeoff and can perform this trick flawlessly, you can judge how high you'll be in the air, and using this as a foundation, you can add twists and flips. In this Olympic games, Bergoust may pull out all the stops and try for something he's never done on snow: three twists in the second of the four flips and another twist on the third of four flips.
Skiers hit speeds of 60 to 70 mph during the in-run to a jump. Consistent speed will - or should - lead to a consistent height at the apex of the jump.
Of course, many factors can affect how much speed you get, so a jumper has to constantly assess height during the trick, so that they don't land on their head.
"You don't know that until you get in the air, and until then it's not exactly clear how high you are," he said. "It can be just as dangerous to be too high as it is to be too low."
Once he gets in the air, Bergoust can change aspects of his body position to make him spin faster or slower. Extending his arms can slow down his flips, while withdrawing his knees helps him make more rotations before he lands.
Although he is his own harshest critic, Bergoust knows the feeling of perfection; that feeling when he takes off from the 20-foot tall jump and the maneuver just flows. "As soon as I come off the jump I know I don't have to do anything," he says. "It feels like I don't even have to move. Everything was set in motion perfectly."
With his retirement from aerials looming on the horizon, Bergoust's friends have suggested he try other sports. One friend suggested golf.
But at age 40, Bergoust knows the pitfalls of starting a sport late in life. "I've been finding faults in myself for 20 years now," he said. "I just want to have fun. I don't think I'm going to get into golf."
The Eric Bergoust Resume
Three time Olympian
15 World Cup wins
Reigning World Cup aerials champion
1994 Olympics, seventh place
1998 Olympic gold medalist
1999 World Champion
Won three gold and one bronze in 2001-2002 World Cup competition
2002 Olympics, 12th place
Two-time Grand Prix overall champion
On the Net: www.airbergy.com
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