The moment I think about past letdowns or future hypotheticals, I mentally put myself on shaky ground. If I clear my mind of chatter, I can succeed, just like I did in 2006.
It's cool when people ask me about my gold medal and they say it will last forever. I will try to promote skiing and show everyone it's not just about competition. It's about having fun with your friends in the snow. I want to bring people with less opportunities to the snow, try to use my gold medal to support programs to bring more people to the snow.
To me the Olympic spirit embodies the magic of competition, hard work and coming to a point in your career when you're around the best athletes in the world, and having the whole world watching.
I really think positive and hope that everything works out. Because you can't really change anything.
We're really friendly. The cool thing about skiing is you're competing against the clock. Even though you're competing against your teammates, it's not head-to-head. And we can all do better. You can always do better. You never really have a perfect run. And someone beats you. So you can't really blame anyone.
I knew I really had to put down a good run. I played it safe, and took risks when I could, and I came in the fastest, I guess.
I think of how most people only get three weeks of vacation a year. And that, for me, seems like it would be really hard. My life feels like a vacation.
Our sport is really European, so you get to show off what you do to your friends and family and they can actually follow along.
For me, it really just feels calm. When you're going fast on a downhill course, it's typically where it's wide open. I think it's kind of like driving a car. If you're going really fast and it's straight, everything seems to slow down. In general, racing downhill involves bigger turns and everything sort of slows down and you have a lot of time to think.
I come to Maui and go surfing, standup paddling, slacklining, swimming, and free-diving.
