Bode Miller

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's Podcast.
My guest today is a special treat, truly legendary skier
Bode Miller. Good to have here. How's it going? How
often do you ski these days? More or less every day?
So did you go out today? I didn't. Today was

(00:28):
one of my one of my bad bad days. Um,
I was on in front of this computer all day,
which is my least favorite thing. Maybe, but um, yeah,
it's usually it's been. I probably had fifty five days
this year, so it's it's a lot. I mean, it's
not it's not what it used to be. But yeah,
it's a lot of skiing. Okay, do you still enjoy

(00:49):
it as much? As much? As pretty subjective? But I
enjoy it a lot. I enjoy going with my kids
and just parting around. I can ski with with anybody
and have a good time. I think more or less
I liked outside. I would be a really good golf caddy. Um.
I I golf a lot, and I could give two
ships about hitting the ball. I just like being outside
and walking around. So I think as a caddy, i'd

(01:10):
carry the bag and kid give advice and um enjoy it.
Probably three times more than I enjoy golf, but um, yeah,
I still you know, the other day we had a
little powder and I and I ran a couple of
steep shoots with a good young friend of mine who's
I've known since he was born, um since he's twenty
years younger than me, and my older sister's best friend's kid,
and it was there was a unique pleasure that I

(01:33):
don't know that I've ever really felt before seeing a
kid who I knew from when he was born and
I was a huge influence on his life being that
We're from the same town and watching him, uh, you know,
just kill these shoots at at Yellowstone and Big Sky,
and um, there's definitely a special pleasure of that, but
I enjoy just all of it about skiing. Now, I

(01:54):
certainly skied Big s guy. What shoots did you ski?
In this case, we were actually we hiked were way
over on the Dakota side, so the side that faces
kind of the south, and and uh we we rode
up Dakota, we rode up um Shed Horn, and we
hiked up a little bit and then we traversed far
to the backside kind of the outskirts of what big sky,

(02:15):
uh limits are, and we we ran a couple of
shoots that kind of face towards I guess the East. Um,
I don't know if they even have names over there.
I don't know that anybody really gets to him because
you have to go off the tram and ski down
that kind of back ridge and then drop into the
Dakota Bowl. But that that wasn't the better stuff. Honestly.
The better stuff was in y c Um just off

(02:36):
of the shoulder there, and we we went over to
there's Pinnacle and Corner Pocket and they're just you know,
they're short and easy, which is perfect for me because
my I'm not as fit as I once was, so
it's nice that I'm not doing four thousand continuous vertical,
But um, it was. It was. It was awesome to
watch somebody who had known since they were a kid
ski and a lot of ways better than I was. Now.

(02:58):
I've certainly skied a ton, not as much to you,
but at this point in time, unless it's a really
stormy day, which I enjoy, I find it much more
enjoyable if I'm with somebody. Is that also your experience?
I like both, honestly, I think for me I'm not
a I'm not a meditative person um in terms of
sitting still and being quiet, but skiing gives me that,

(03:20):
and it did when I was young, so I was
really kind of born into it. I you know, skied
at Cannon my formative years. Cannon On and I skied
every day. The mountain was open for three years, and
there you'd routinely on a on a minus fifteen or
minus twenty day blow and you'd have four or five
people on the whole mountain. So I was riding the

(03:41):
chairlift and then the PbD chairs seventeen and it's um,
you know, the Hong Kong share was twelve minutes. So
I had these intermittent blocks between active action where I'm
you know, trying to ski of like totally serene silence
and just looking at nature. And that was my aitation.
So I think I I revert back to that really easily.

(04:02):
So for me, skiing alone is different, I think than
a lot of people. But like I said, that was
a unique opportunity. The other day of skia, Shamus was
really I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as
I did because it was disproportionate to just a good
conversation on the chairlift. I really enjoyed the actual skiing
and watching him ski now skiing in that cold weather.
I know, I still have toes at this very moment

(04:24):
that they're tingling and I'm sitting inside. To what degree
if you've gotten frostbite, and to what degrees your body
banged up from being on the circuit. M uh, you know,
I'm actually not too banged up. My back is a
bit so I wake up, you know, the stiff back
in the morning. I'm not sure how much of that's
my matches that you can see in the background here,
or or just my you know, twenty five years of

(04:47):
racing at a high level. But um, but you know,
I'm super thankful, remarkably lucky considering the crashes I took,
in the longevity of my career in a really high risk,
low margin, high consequence sport. But in terms of frost
bite and stuff, I was I I was gifted with
ray nods. I don't know if you know ray nods.

(05:07):
I know what you're talking about, kind of a circulatory anomaly,
but done correctly and managed correctly. I think reynods is
actually a gift for those of us who are cold
weather athletes, because my hands get really stiff and white
and uncoordinated really quickly. So like I can be in
the pool in California and it's probably pools eighty degrees
or eighty five degrees, and my heels will get all white,

(05:30):
my hands get all white, and I can't really a
dexterity goes away. But they don't get frostbite ever. I mean,
I've been in minus thirty five and I've had little
little bits of frost bit on my knuckles from you know,
certain things, but in general, compared to the people around
me in Maine, when I was at boarding school or
at Cannon, or even on the World Cup in certain
instances with super tight boots and out there for you know,

(05:52):
four or five hours at a time in minus thirty, um,
I was remarkably lucky. And I think that Ray nods
actually because the cat larry reflects where everything trunches down somehow,
it actually prevents prospect to some degree. Wow, that's pretty interesting. Okay,
that's my own philosophy. You can. I don't want to
get too scientific on you. No, plenty, Scientifically that's what's great. Okay,

(06:17):
you have a new education initiative can you tell us
about that? Yeah, I see l is in STU for
civic leadership. It comes really I'm I'm sort of the
figurehead for it, although I've supported it for sixteen years now.
They've been online for roughly twenty years. UM. The Spawn
family has been stewards of Dwight Academy or Dwight Schools

(06:39):
for um a hundred years, more than a hundred years,
and the Dwight Schools have been around for a hundred
and fifty or so years, so a huge legacy and
incredible quality of school and educational purpose and drive and
also human development. Really, they they put kids in the
top colleges around the world all the time. But more
than that, they're developing leaderships, pills and uh community UM

(07:02):
responsibility and accountability, all that stuff. So we intended to
do brick and mortar academies these last few years, and
we were probably on the ten yard line um of that,
and then COVID struck and it just kind of really
throw a wrench and things. So we we launched the
online initiative just to give parents a better opportunity to
give their kids a high level education during this time

(07:24):
where all these schools are even really fantastic schools are
really struggling to transition to online learning for these kids,
and um, you know, I see all have been doing
it for twenty years, so they had a nineteen and
a half year head start. So um it's been. It's
been incredible to engage these kids. We have fifty years
so students in the Winter Sports Academy, and um it's been. Yeah,

(07:44):
it's you know, it's it's part of my nature. My
grandparents started a tennis camp that was heavily into tennis instruction,
but also character development and community and um, you know,
all the all the good qualities that we all hope
we could you know, instill in our kids or and
still in ourselves if we have the choice. Um so
it's very natural to me. And uh it's been. That's

(08:05):
been one of the really cool things that's come out
of this COVID debacle. Okay, what specifically is different about
this academy. Uh So, it's an inverted blended curriculum, which
means essentially each kid is obligated to somewhere between an
hour and an hour and a half of live online
classes per day. But during that time, this is the

(08:26):
inverted part. The teacher actually just facilitates conversation between the kids.
There is no teacher trying to tell you about your
homework or what you did or they just they let
you apply that within your class to how you felt
about it, what it applies to in real life. They
facilitate that conversation the rest of your day. You you
are held accountable to it, and you can self regulate

(08:47):
manage your time. So, but they're all online courses that
are essentially self instructed, So they have videos for kids
who are more visual learners, they have audio and visual
for reading and all that. It's basically demonstrations of what
it is and applications in real life. And it's like
you you can't go to your parents and say I
don't understand what I'm supposed to do. It literally spells

(09:09):
it out. You have all these different drills. If kids struggle,
puts them into a different group and they learned that way.
So basically it allows kids to do about twice as
much work and feel like they're doing half as much.
And then and the only obligation they have, which is
an hour and a half all day, you know, is
spent conversing with their friends with facilitation of a teacher

(09:33):
and they come out of it with a you know,
a degree that will get them into Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
you know, Stanford, any of the big school So it's
for me. I mean, it's one of those things I
wish was around when I was there. And my element
of that is then I do webinars weekly. We have
webinar Wednesdays. I talked to the kids, give them, you know,
contextual stuff about what I did my career, what I

(09:54):
wished i'd had, how I deal with stress, how I
dealt with competition, um, you know, every every rething. And
it's really just kind of a very family oriented kind
of feel of just being a resource for them. Plus
I give them training, um missions and and and affiliate
training programs and products that they could test out and

(10:16):
try that that I would have loved to have when
I was younger. I think would have really helped. And
um yeah, you know, my my role in this, because
we don't have a brick and mortar, is much less
where I'd be doing programming and kind of day to
day stuff. In this case, I'm just trying to layer
in as much help as I can to a really
kick ass let me be clear, is this only for
ski racers or is it for the general public. No,

(10:37):
so i CEL has been around for twenty years, so
they've had students for twenty years doing this for dance,
for acting, for who knows what. But um, the Winter
Sports Actually Academy was this year and we have kids
who are snowboarders, Nordic alpine, um snowshoe who liked to
go mountaineering, who just wanted to not do the crappy

(11:00):
public school program and are finding things to do with
themselves in the winter. And that's partly what we talked
about our webinars is just how do you do fun
stuff that you could explore and when use your youth?
You know, they all say you youth's wasted on the young.
I'm trying to make it wasted less. Okay. You know,
Malcolm Gladwell popularize the theory that ten thousand hours are

(11:20):
needed to become world class. It's been a lot of
documentation after that. But let's just assume you were presented
with a very young person under the age of five.
Do you think you could turn that person into a
competitive World Cup ski racer or do you believe there's
inherent natural talent. Yeah, there's there's an airent natural talent
that will make it a lot easier. I think you

(11:41):
could turn them into a World Cup ski racer. Depending
on what country they're from. We happen to be gifted
with a lousy World Cup culture. So being from America,
you could turn almost any race or get get taken
them in at five. You could turn almost any racer
into a World Cup or any person young person into
a World Cup racer. Would they wig races? I doubt it. Um,

(12:02):
it gets very nuanced and very difficult at the very
very top. We're talking about the best in the entire world.
But you could definitely get them to race World Cup
and place, say, you know, in the top thirty and
in several races for virtually any human uh that you found. Okay,
let's go back to education. Needless to say, we have
a large education problem in the United States. There's the

(12:25):
war between religious private public. Is there enough money keeople
keeping people interested? Teaching to the test as opposed to
learning to analysis? Uh the analyze two questions, is your
program scalable? And yes or no? Do you feel there's
a way to solve the educational problem personally? In the

(12:45):
United States. Yeah, I'll start with the second. First is
is yeah, I think I think ours is fully scalable.
This is I believe the solution is that the difference
is we don't you need back end programming because this
allows for this remarkable amount of freedom and flexibility of schedule.
You need programming to fit around that what the requirements are,

(13:07):
and that programming has to be done well. School kind
of cheats that system where they basically lock your kid
up from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon.
It's more of a glorified glorified babysitting system more than educational.
I mean, the kids, if they're determined, can learn a
lot and can get something out of it. But in
my opinion, the more critical elements, as we all see

(13:27):
as you get to the top of an industry, is
you know, perseverance, um, determination, self reliance, creativity. Things that
aren't necessarily taught in books, they're discovered through activities, are
through challenges and um I'm hoping that. Yeah, I mean,
ours is fully scaled, but we could literally go. We
have master class teachers. They're all recorded, so because the

(13:49):
way they're designed, you don't need more. I mean they
are what they are. We will refine the curriculum all
the time, but it's ultimately scalable to the entire us
and the cost is less than public school. So call
about eight thousand bucks right now for a public school kid.
Uh cost us about eight thousand bucks to do this
in the education is about four times better. So how
do you motivate someone who is hardheaded and not motivating? Yeah,

(14:14):
I mean everyone loves to do something. Um, you know
a lot of people don't know what they love to
do yet, but they need exposure to lots of things
to discover what that is, especially young people. It's usually activity,
interaction with other kids. And then we have a really
clever way of kind of parlaying that passion, that enthusiasm
for something that you wouldn't have to kick them three
times out the door to go get them to do
if it was their buddy out there playing basketball or

(14:36):
going skiing or whatever, they're chomping at the bit to
go do that. You parlay that into the understanding of
how to sort of make things that suck not you know, fun,
make things that suck exciting. And it's it's takes a
little creativity and a little time. But given the flexibility
of the schedule, it makes a ton easier because they're
not They're able to exhaust themselves doing things they love

(14:58):
and then come in with a really as an attitude
in the place, really um sort of receptive to learning
and and get an incredible amount done. Okay, prior to
going to Maine Caribasset Academy, which is ski racing Academy,
what was your educational experience? Lay at regional public school
and then a bit of profile high school, junior high

(15:19):
and freshman year, and it was, Um, I would say
it was really easy for me. I wasn't uh, you know,
exceptional in terms of grades or anything. I was kind
of a middle of the road student, but I never
failed things. I just didn't really do a lot of work,
didn't engage much, wasn't interested. Um, I like science. I
liked you know. I came from a family of doctors.

(15:39):
My dad was in medical school, as too older brothers
or doctors, and his grandfather, his father, my grandfather was
a doctor, um, a prominent East Coast doctor, so I
kind of had like a I was exposed to lots
of medical books and lots of my dad, you know,
still try. He speaks Latin. He as an incredible vocabulary.
So I had good homeschooling teachers prior to public school,
which I started in third grade, and then public school

(16:02):
was just kind of a waste of my time, I
felt like. So I was excited and willing to take
the risk of going off to boarding school. But it
was definitely um. It was. It was nigo blow because
I was going from a big fish in a small
pond to a small fish and a much bigger pond.
But and the demands were much higher. But I knew

(16:22):
that I was capable of dealing with it, and so
I just kind of dove in. Okay, you're a legendary
independent thinker. Where did you get that from your parents?
From your family? Yeah, I mean it's it's the great
mystery is how much is uh nature versus nurture? I
don't you know? Everyone in my family is stubborn. Right.

(16:42):
We come from New Hampshire. It's a live, free or
die state, Like just our state motto should tell you something.
But I also my dad was in third year medical school.
He was in his his what do you call that is?
Um Yeah, he's in the hospital actually diagnosing real patients
and all that, and he walked from that, through it,
through it away after coming from a family with a
very prominent father who's a you know, open heart surgeon

(17:05):
and pioneering a lot of stuff in the East Coast,
two older brothers who are doctors practicing, and he walked
away from that to go speak at Woodstock and uh,
you know, and formed the political party, the Turtle Party,
and you know a bunch of he was a hippie,
you know. He So there's a defiant nature that comes
from my dad's side and my mom's side is probably
only amplified their true New Hampshire, Um, you know locals

(17:28):
and and you know, screw anybody who tries to tell
me what to do. And so I definitely had it
from that side genetically and and culturally, like it's it's
the nature of New Hampshire. You do what you want
to do, and um, you stick to it, and you're
accountable and you don't blame other people. And so I
had that also through my upbringing of my you know,

(17:48):
i'd leave that when I was four or five years old.
I go outside at eight thirty in the morning and
i'd come back at four you know, and I don't
know how much the time my mom was tracking me around.
I doubt she was, but um comforting to think she was,
because I've got myself in a some sketchy situations and
was touch and go for a lot of times. But um,
that kind of independence, you know, teaches you a lot

(18:10):
about um risk management and self reliance and and being
accountable to your actions and that, you know, so I was.
It's it's a mystery to me, but certainly I had
it from every angle, uh to to develop into a
very defiant, independent, self reliant, uh self motivated person. Okay,
before you go to care Bassett, what kind of kid

(18:32):
are you? Are you the loner, a member of the group,
a leader, an outcast? What were you like? Uh? I
was probably a general? Um I was. I didn't like
the spotlight, so I didn't like being the guy. And
there was always the guy. There was like some kid
who was better looking or it was funny or had
like you know, all the jokes or whatever. But I

(18:53):
was super dominant in athletics. So on the soccer field baseball,
I've never played, and I got to be the best
kid on the team really quick. That was really good
at I wasn't naturally that gifted. I was just exposed
to a ton of sports as a home schooled kid,
with a tennis camp all summer and skiing all winter,
and snowboarding and sledding and standing up on those old
snurfboards and climbing around in the rivers and running up

(19:15):
and down the rivers and rock climbing of Mountcols. So
I had this massive if you want to talk about gladwell,
I had this massive volume of hugely dynamic sports activity, coordination,
mental discipline, all these things at a really young age.
So it allowed me to adjust and tweak to any
situation I was in and be successful. So, um, you know,

(19:35):
I had I had good friends. I was not a bully,
I was I was a connector. I was friends with
the older kids because they played sports at a higher
level and I like that. I was friends with a
skater guys. I smoked a bunch of weed because I
like skateboarding and you know, and they were fun. I
was friends with guys who were forty five years old
because they skied on cold days. They were the ski bums.

(19:57):
And I played soccer with my uncle's who were a
generation before me, and so I really had. Like in
New Hampshire, you don't have the option to pick one friend.
Ye for me, I, like so many things, I was
required to make friends with everybody. So I had a
very diverse group of friends and I was kind of
jumping around and most of them couldn't understand how does
he like come skateboard with us and then go rock

(20:19):
climbing with his uncle or go play a soccer game
that afternoon. And that's just the way I lived. Okay,
you talk about home schooling, but from K through the
first and second year of high school you were in
traditional school, right, No. I started public school in third
grade in like, yeah, the middle of third grade thing,
how do you decide to go to Cara bassett Um.

(20:41):
The year before, I had gotten um sort of violated
in a way, uh politically by a coach in Franconia.
He'd he'd called up a race after and said that
I admitted to him that I hooked a tip and
I should be disqualified. I had never done that. He
was upset with me because we had a little bit
of a throwdown in front of some of the other
kids and a couple of parents where he was saying

(21:03):
that I couldn't train because I was too bad, and
I should do the drills he wanted me to do,
and I said, I don't care about your drills. I
just want to run some gates because I have j
O qualifiers tomorrow. And so he was pretty bad heard
about that argument and and felt like he wanted to
get me back. He called this race how a race
thrown out? And uh, I didn't make the Junior Olympics
that year as a twelve year old, and uh, my

(21:25):
town and and kind of everybody ran him out of
town on a on a you know, tard and feathered,
but it didn't change the fact that it was out
of the jail is that previous year. And they said, look,
you know, if you're serious about this, we'll figure out
a way, um to get you into care about that.
My mom was good, was best friends when she was
fifteen with the headmaster's wife, so that was kind of
an in. And then I had to you know, I

(21:46):
lived with a day student twenty miles away from school,
off in the woods with no no access by car. Um.
That was my first year at c v A, and
I only went for the winter term. So I went
November and came back, and I guess March um and uh,
and I had to work all summer to pay it off.
So I paid paid my own way with help from
some of the locals in my town. But it was, yeah,

(22:07):
it was it was scratching at that point. What did
your father do for a living having dropped out of
medical school, professional hippie? He? Uh. He and my mom
were together till I was six, and then they separated
and he went down to Tennessee primarily because he was
unhappy and I think had had had had had several

(22:29):
you know, early seventies, mid seventies affairs, but also um,
he had missed out on He he invented foot spars,
which were these date fig maple syrup, a bunch of
different nuts in this tiny little rapper bar. And this
is in nineteen seventy nine probably, and uh that's pre

(22:50):
power bar, pre everything else. He if you went back
through his his life from just before I was born,
he he invented six or seven things that turned into
billion dollar industries. And he was way ahead of the curve.
But his lack of ability to see things through or
or do the steps that maybe weren't as fun for him. Uh,
prevented him from ever monetizing anything. So then he when

(23:12):
he separated from my mom, which I think, as I said,
was not to go make money, but that was part
of the excuse. He went down to Tennessee and was
a tree route, so he would climb up in huge
trees along these big mansion uh driveways and outside of Nashville,
and he he'd clean up the trees and make sure
branches were going to break people's houses and cars. And
UM he did that for I think five or six

(23:33):
years down there, and then uh ended up moving back up.
Now he's he worked. Phrase he was a homeless outreach
worker for fifteen years in New England. UM, he still
maintains his very hippie hippie approach. He's never really made
made any money. Okay, if you're at Cara Bassett, you
get out from under the bad coach. You're there, Hey,

(23:57):
do you fit in these the coaching beneficial? UM? I
would say fit in fine because I love sports and
I was a hard worker. UM coaching was still problematic
because I was bad. Uh you know that the end
of that first year, UM, I didn't really have any
good results to speak of. Uh. Certain coaches could see

(24:17):
that I had a lot of ross speed and I
was naturally very athletic um. But they they sat me
down after the first year, and again keep in mind,
I was I was getting up at four thirty in
the morning, doing chores, getting on a snowbile, snowbiling six
miles along these crazy main trails into Kingfield, hitching a
ride with some worker or employee up to carabast, getting

(24:39):
there in time for morning meeting, going through classes, going
to hill training classes, come back down, get in a
car eighteen miles back down to the Kingfield, back on
a snowobile six miles through the woods, chores, homework, dinner,
bed and doing that over and over again. And I
was with another student who was two years older than me,
but then he would go off on fist racing trips

(25:00):
for a week and a half two weeks, so I'd
be on my own. So I was, you know, fourteen
years old, driving my own snowobile through six miles from
the woods like rickety ass. And at the end of
that year I had they had like an intervention. They
sat down with the Dina students, UM all the coaches
and they said, look, you're lazy and you. You suck
at skiing, You're never gonna be any good. Um, we

(25:22):
don't like your attitude. You don't, you don't really you know,
show a lot of like initiative enthusiasm. If you switch
to snowboarding, we'll give you a full ride back to school,
you'll live in the dorm next year, won't pay anything
all set. Um. I was good at snowboarding. I'd grown
up snowboarding and we had an all school snowboard races.
What inspired this is I was like second or third
and one of the runs and the that we had
the best snowboards in the country at that time, and

(25:43):
they went around the circle and basically all just just
pop my balloon, like talk about p in the serial.
It was. It was brutal, and I was happy not
to have broken down and cried right there, because it
was pretty brutal because I I was doing double what
any other student in the school was doing, minus the
dude who was my my sort of I guess housemate,

(26:04):
but he was even doing less than I wasn't he's
a couple of years older, so um. But I reflected
on that thought about a bunch and then told him
the pounds and and that if they needed to charge
me more to come back to school, i'd I'd figure
out a way to pay it. And I wanted to
be a ski racer and snowboarding was not what I
wanted to do, so um yeah, I fit in, but
I was still definitely defiant and definitely was not fitting

(26:27):
into the system the way they wanted to. And I said, look,
you guys, I suck now. I'll give you that. You're
not wrong, but I'm gonna be better when I'm fifteen,
and I'm gonna be better when i'm eighteen, and when
i'm twenty you'll start to see how good I can be.
That's what it's gonna take. And I apologize if that's
too long a timeline for you guys, but you know,
I've known this for ten years at that point, since
I was six or seven when I talked to my

(26:48):
grandmother about it a bunch and I said, look, it's
not important how good I am when I'm fifty and
there's not a lot of prize money there, and if
you win races, you know, it's it's a different deal.
I need to be good when I'm when I'm old
enough to be successful in the world stage. Okay, ultimately
you were, but you know, you have a unique style,
and certainly I grew up in the area. Was your

(27:10):
in the are of first your skis were together, then
racers were a part and they had changed in equipment.
Was the coaching ever helpful or really you were coaching
yourself and you had the benefit of them setting the
gates up and logistics. I would say both. I mean,
I think the coaching was very rarely helpful in the

(27:31):
immediate term. I think the coaching was really helpful long term,
over over one or two year span where I listened
to everything and I retain information really well, and mostly
what I was doing. The way that I developed, in
the way that I learned things was by watching other people.
I would watch somebody who I liked a certain thing.
They could be worse than I did than I was
at that time, but I liked specifically the way they

(27:53):
moved into a turn. And I had a very good
understanding of of sort of the biomechanics of skiing and
how did underrate speed. And that's one thing that I
wasn't willing to give up, and that was always a
pushback from the coaches. They wanted me to do manually
adjust certain things, and I said, I can't do those
things because it'll cost me these things that I need
to keep alive because if I if I kill him,

(28:14):
I'm not sure I'll have arrest resurrect them later. And
those are the most important things. So UM, the coaching,
I would say in hindsight, was a lot of it
was UM was emotional arousal control and races patients. I
learned a lot of that stuff from those coaches, and
I had some amazing coaches up at t v A.

(28:34):
From a technical standpoint, I don't think I learned that much. Okay,
speaking of technical standpoint, you had a breakthrough. You were
in the U S Nationals I believe it was, and
used the K two for which was a shaped recreational ski.
How did you decide to do that? I've been a snowboarder, um,

(28:54):
as I said. They tried to get me a switch
of snowboarding in ninth grade. This is all the way
into my senior year, and I've been working on rage
tore me who was a K two rep uh and
the East Coast too. Raised with my uncle, so I had,
you know, kind of a little extra credibility with him
and he's a great dude. And uh, I'd cut a snowboard,
alpine snowboard in half and mounted mounted ski bindings on
it and flipped the edges so that I had one

(29:15):
side cut edge and then one raw band sad edge.
If you touch that to the snow, you crashed immediately.
And I was arcing turns and I had George watched me,
and I said, George, we need to build a shape ski.
I was always trying to innovate. It was during that
time we had Derby flex and higher lifters, and the
one thing that was missing was more side cut. And
you could clearly see that snowboarders could turns all day

(29:36):
that it would have been happening for years, and we
just hadn't done in skiing. So George said, hey, we
tried that in the seventies. It didn't work. I was like, well,
you tried it wrong, let's try it again. And um,
I had worked on him for two years. Finally he
got them to build a semblance of of what I'd
asked for. And I did everything from exact construction. I
wanted a cap construction to give torsional stiffness, and I

(29:57):
was in mechanical drawing and all that stuff. So I
was doing at a on board and I was drawing
everything out and um, finally he built them, and uh,
the day that I got them, it changed really changed
the sport. Um Alan had been developing their shape ski
during that same phase, but no one had skied on
it yet, and races, no one had really experimented with it.

(30:17):
So the K two four was the first ski that
I had really developed um and forced through and I
raced on it in the Junior Olympics and I won
the Super G by two point you know, seven seconds,
and I was more than five seconds ahead before I crashed.
I went on my hip a couple of times on
the bottom and lost a ton of time, but still
ended up winning by almost three seconds, and then won
the Giant Sloan by over two seconds as well with

(30:39):
several crashes, and the Giant Slam as well. So that
really shocked people and opened the eyes and put the
you know, the magnifying glass on K two. And then
the next year, everybody, I didn't use those skis in
the nationals. That's that's a common mistake. I was only
in the nationals for Giant slom and and slom and
I crashed in the gs and blew out. And then

(31:00):
and the slalom, I used the traditional ski. My my
slalom ski was the same length as my K two four,
so I was using the same length and slalom and
gs and uh and I'm pulled off a really magical
um run from way back in the pack and finished
third to objectively qualified for the team. If I hadn't
objectively qualified, there was zero chance they were taking me
on the team. Okay, so you are partially responsible for

(31:23):
the development of the K four K two four. Yeah, yeah,
And I think I mean not to split hairs. But
I wouldn't even say partially. I would say, uh, you know,
nineties seven percent. They fought me on it for two years.
I've been pushing it. I gave George the snowboard. I
showed him the side cut, I showed him everything. I
cut the snowboard even thinner, and that screwed it up.

(31:46):
And I said, this is what you did in the
seventies when you tried shape skis. You didn't have the torsion.
If I left the snowboard as half, I had a
raw edge of wood that i'd bands on, and then
a side cut finished edge. I could arc turns on
that if I cut off another half of that to
make it the width of a normal race ski. Its
skied like ship because it was too torsionately weak. It
would twist too much, and that's what they had messed up.

(32:07):
So I said, you know, I really worked hard on
him for two years, and I will say, of all
my qualities, my persistence and stubbornness are are two of
my elite level of qualities. And I just wore them down, honestly.
And he finally went in there and said, look, dude,
we gotta build these skis. And they didn't even really
tell him. He said, it's a Rex ski. It'll be awesome.
We'll try it. They built him and they sold out
across the country in a week and a half. Okay,

(32:30):
let's talk about equipment. You were with numerous companies. You
started with Fisher, you went to ros and y'all. You
were Thetomic, you went to Head. Is there really any difference.
Let's just start with the skis themselves opposed to the boots.
Is there really any difference or you can get in
and make the ski work for you. No, it's a

(32:51):
massive difference, massive difference. I mean the engineers are are
different philosophically, the equipment, the layoup process side cuts there.
There's a huge prints also that they became systems pretty early,
where a boot, binding plate, ski all work together, and
if you didn't have that right you could really screwed up.
But keep in mind before that, I skied on UM
K two Olwen Rosignal previous to World Cup racing. This

(33:16):
is through my sort of high school years. UM. I
skied on uh Nasal, I skied on Atomic twice, really
two different versions there. UM, and I gravitated towards K
two because of the relationship with George, and I was
able to get better skis and then UM. But yeah,
the difference from KTU to Fisher was was night and day.

(33:37):
I mean it was a huge I would have had
a really, really really hard time trying to win a
World Cup race that I stayed on K two my
entire career, UM, regardless of my own engineering prowess or
anything else. Fisher I had the ability to win races
that year. Um, then Rosignal I had the ability to
win races and start moving into speed effectively, so into
super ge downhill, and then UM from from Rozzie. Is

(34:00):
when I kind of I wouldn't say sold out, but
switched to Atomic where I knew I was do. I
was physically finally mature and strong enough, and um, I
knew I could be a world beater. So I switched
to Atomic and that's when I won, you know, the
Wired to wire overall World Cup and all the events
in seventeen days, you know. Um. And then and then

(34:20):
after that was more of I wanted to develop skis
and fell in with Head and stayed with them for
three years. Okay, let's start with Fisher. Okay, I agree,
totally ski ski totally different. I happen to like the
French skis. I like something a little bit more alive.

(34:42):
But at World Cup level you're not skiing on retail skis.
So when we talk about Fisher, would you tell them
how to make the skis or they just had a
bunch of skis? You tested them and you skied what
you liked. No. By that point I had a very
clear idea. That was a big part of it is
K two was actually pulling away from World Cup, and
it was almost mandatory. I switched. And when I went

(35:04):
to several companies which I was in demand. I could
have switched to several UM. I told Fisher, will you
build me this exact slom ski? This is the ski
it needs to be, this, this fiberglass, this top sheet,
this side cut, this would core this many laminates across.
Will you build me this? And they said, yeah, it's
not gonna work, but we'll build it for you. And

(35:25):
I said, okay, build it for me. And UM that
was that was a dealmaker because the other companies were
at that time this is you know, in two thousand,
UM I was. I didn't have the credibility and the
industry wasn't prepared to take that type of input from
the athletes. They would take, as you said, they'd give
them five pairs, which do you like best? And then
they would go back and try to figure out which

(35:46):
materials to change to make the new ones better and
all that. So, UM, that was the very beginning of that.
And I wanted a company that was going to do
exactly what I said, and Fisher offered to do that, UM,
and so I went. And actually that was the beginning
of a massive revolution in the sport where within two
years every company had their athletes in the actual ski

(36:07):
room showing them fiberglass, showing them metals, and trying to
figure out because there was a huge gap between what
you felt on the hill and what the engineer decided
was going to impact that feeling. There. There's there's thirty
ways to skin a cat in that case, and they
just had too big a gap. So we closed that
gap right up, okay, slowly. How and why did you

(36:27):
decide to switch to Rozzie. I decided because of one
particular gs ski, so I'd want a couple of slams
on Fisher. I had won a couple of gs is.
Um the ski was already going down the path that
we ended up on then now, which is a very

(36:48):
tiptail ski, so you could feel the very very tip
of the ski engaged in the snow, and if it
hit a bump, it would deflect and you'd lose radios,
so it would flap down and it would just and
I skied on Nordica, I skied on Razzie, I skied
on Dinas Star And the rosignal skis that they had

(37:09):
for me at that time was a complete anomaly in
the irony, As this has happened to me several times.
They built five pairs. So it's a prototype run of
a ski and they said, have body test these keys. Um,
they couldn't get the I don't know if you remember Rozzie.
At that time, they had a V A S plate.
It's this little metal plate that's stuck on the top
of the ski. They couldn't get that plate to stick

(37:29):
to the aluminum which is right under the top sheet,
and then the felt it was metal on metal and
it would just fly off. And so they actually on
that particular batch, they said, well, ship will just cut
a hole in the aluminium, will will stick that thing
through that hole to the aluminium, will glue it onto
the wood below, and it worked perfect. So stayed on.

(37:50):
I got all five of those pairs of skis. I
broke one immediately actually in the testing program. But because
they cut that hole in the top layer of aluminum,
they created a bit of a hinge point in the
ski right there, and you had this unbelievable grip point
just in front of the binding. So if you slid
into a turn in chundery, you know, icy conditions, you
had this grip point right in front of the binding

(38:11):
that you could always rely on. And the tip wasn't
even the part grabbing you pulled radius that was disproportionate
to your side cut because the tip was actually not
doing it. It was just folding in this tiny little
space right in front of the binding and you just
it was like a hockey skate. And I I didn't
know at the time that that was the only five
pairs in existence. UH three M who was their glue

(38:32):
provider at that time, gave them glue that worked. They
built every ski from that point forward without cutting a
hole in the aluminum because now the metal stuck to
the metal and stayed on there perfectly. And we spent
two years trying to figure out why my race skis
were the best skis ever built, and every other pair
they built was garbage compared to it. So um that
one ski was the reason. It was everything I've been

(38:53):
looking for. And I went one the g S title
against one of the strongest giants long and fields that
that's been around, um you know, Herman Benny Reich, uh
Shaun Felder, Pollander, uh d d A Couch Um Niberg
eber Harder. It was like the powerhouse of g skiing
at that time. For me to win was something that
I wouldn't have been able to do with any other

(39:14):
ski company at that time. Okay, now from a retail level,
Rozzie's in Atomic Sky radically differently. Did you experience that,
You say you went for the money, but that's a
big switch. No, I didn't. I mean you mean when
I supposed to Atomic. No. That was one of the
great regrets in my career looking back, was that I

(39:35):
went to Atomic. They paid me half as much as
Rossie did, and a quarter as much as Nordica was
offering me at that time. A quarter. I would have
had the biggest contract there's ever been in ski racing
by going to Nordica. But Um in Nordica had almad
at that time he was just kind of phasing out.
I would have had an amazing quiver of skis. They
were good in four events. I could have stayed on
Nordica boots Um. There was a lot there that that really,

(39:58):
in hindsight, I would love to know would have happened
had I made that switch. But the Atomics I was
on at that time with the Beta, so that was
that that little arch top they had two aluminum tubes
in there. That Beta did the same thing that Rozzie
cutting the hole in their ski did, but a different way.
It created a torsional imbalance between those two tubes that
were longitudinally very stiff. The ski was was really stiff,

(40:22):
but tortially all the way up until the binding. The
ski actually rotated this way because there were two separate
tubes that moved independently, and that that was a remarkable
g ski. Um. It was the second best GSK I'd
ever been on. And I wanted Atomic because of super
G downhill. I was willing to suck in slam and
and figure it out, but I wanted super G downhill

(40:43):
because what I was on on Rosenal was not allowed
me to move into downhill SUPERG. But I wasn't competitive
and you know again I can't second guess myself. And
that I got on Atomic built my first pair of
boots was down in Cheon in Chile, south of Santiago Go.
And I didn't lose a run of supergier downhill skiing

(41:04):
against the entire French team Darren, my own team, who
was who was strong at that time, UM for for
a month and a half and I didn't I didn't
lose a single run. I mean, so it was kind
of a I wish I knew what would happen if
I had made a different choice, But it was a
very strong switch. Okay, when you were there, certainly the Austrians,
an Austrian company, Herman Meyer, et cetera. You're kind of

(41:27):
further down the totem pole. Does that affect what equipment
you get in, what attention you get? Yeah, that was
a big part of the oh six Olympic debacle. Um
I built a supergee ski. There was also a downhill
ski UM in in say September, and UH and they
politically there was shenanigans there. They the Austrian team, which

(41:50):
basically controls the Austrian factory, UH, took those skis test them.
They couldn't figure them out, which is I wasn't trying
to do intentionally, but there was a very specific way
those skis need to be too and and mounted to
work right, and they couldn't figure it out. So they
kept trying and kept trying them. No guy could make
them work. They were super fast on the flats, but
they couldn't figure out to make them turn. And they
held those all the way until two days before the

(42:12):
Olympic downhill UM and then they gave him to me
and Darren because they knew that I wouldn't be able
to resist trying them and they felt like that would
be a distraction. Darren and I were the two strongest
downhillers really in the world at that point, and uh,
and they wanted every advantage they could get, and that
political Shenanigan's upset both of us. We ended up racing
on the same pair of skis Darren and I. I

(42:32):
skied first, I was starting before him. They ran the
skis up the chairlift. He they re finished them at
the start and he ran the same skis and unfortunately,
lack of experience on them and all that we we
didn't have success in the downhill. I won the combined
downhill against the same field a day later by a second. Um. So,
I mean, you know, they were successful in in thwarding

(42:55):
our our stuff. But uh, that was a piece of
why I was so petulant and upset during that oh
six Olympics, because my team didn't go to bat for me,
and I was just, uh, yeah, I was taking advantage
of it away. How long does a pear of race
skis last depends on how good year keeping them safe.
My my Rozzie's ice skied on the same pair of

(43:16):
race skis the entire first year and say six of
eight races the second year one and would but I wouldn't.
But I wouldn't. I wouldn't train on them. I wouldn't
bring them out for anything. I wouldn't even bring my
training skis out to train on. I would train on
other skis that I specifically tuned in a way to
make them more similar to my race skis, even though

(43:37):
I was nowhere near time wise. And we had a
little funny thing at Solden where we'd we'd do the
Austrian time trial before the first World Cup of the
year was was sold in the US had a sort
of relationship with Austria. We trained with them, and we'd
be training on it right before the time trial, and
my coaches like, dude, you're sucking, Like what's going on.
I'd like, don't worry about I'll be fine, and I'd
go out and bring out just my training skis for

(43:58):
the time trial. And I won that time trial. I
won both runs three years in a row, against all
the Austrians and all of our team, And then I
would put those skis away and I'd go back to
getting beat by guys on my own team, and then
I'd pull out the race skis for a race day
and and win races on them. But it's just you
have to know how to manage them, and you've gotta
be really careful with what you do. Even hitting hard ice,
you can't you can't jam certain ways on it. You

(44:20):
certainly can't hit rocks or anything else. Okay. In the
switch to head you were really the first big name
to go to head. Yeah. Johan Eliosh, who's the owner
of head Um, you know, and I got to know
each other a bit and he said, look, you know,
my goal is to be the number one ski company
in the world. And I was like, all right, let's
do it. I was like, if I'm gonna join you,

(44:41):
you gotta I said. I don't want to get a
bunch of push back. I said, you know me, Uh,
if you're bringing me on for this, I can. I
can get you there. You will be in the number
one ski company. When I tell you to buy this athlete,
you don't bicker about it. You just buy that athlete.
When I tell you about build new skis in this category,
build new skis like it's gonna cost you some money,
but will get to number one. He said, I'm not
concerned about the money. Let's do it. And um, that

(45:04):
was an exciting fun, uh new project for me because
I was building skis not just for myself. I was
building skis for the women's team. I was building skis
for men's who skied very differently than I did in
some cases, were much more talented in certain areas than
I was. And that was that was fun. I enjoyed
that a lot. Okay, but you're essentially going, it's a
blank slate. Did you really just tell them how to

(45:26):
build the skis? They had did remarkable engineers. Um, you know,
Head was maybe the strongest in the entire world in
terms of their raw engineering power. What they didn't have
was what all these other ski companies that really capitalized
in the six years previous to that was really good
communication with top level athletes who are raising World Cup

(45:47):
all the time. They just didn't have the athletes, and
they didn't have a rapport or vocabulary to communicate even
with the athletes they did have, which were lower level. Um.
So yeah, when I came on, I basically communicated with
those engineer it was. It was a great It was
a great time because they understood everything I said. Nothing
was shocking. They had already done a bunch of great

(46:07):
things over the past years that I actually reinvigorated and said, no,
I think you were really close. This was an awesome idea.
You guys are way ahead of the curve. You just
have to tweak these things because here's how this feels
on the snow, and here's what you're missing. And they
could do it, you know, overnight, and then I'd moved things.
So we moved forward very quickly. Within that first year
when I switched um that was six or seven season.

(46:29):
We had the best speed skis on the planet that
first year because we reinvigorated the traction system with that cut.
They put this cut through the top layer and top
layer of aluminum and they bridge that with a piece
of aluminium underneath it. But it does that same thing.
It creates an inflection point in the ski and they
just hadn't quite got that right. And we got that right,
and the skew was unbelievable. What about the famous two
edge skis to I mean, like the one was on

(46:54):
top of another, that those work was that you know,
just get a lot of press. I think it just
got a lot of press. I mean it was you know,
there's metal slow period, like the thinner edges the better, UM.
But there's certain elements of that that I think are
gonna be relevant in the future. UM, particularly for big
mountain really steep stuff, having an edge that skis normally,

(47:17):
but having a secondary edge that comes out of your
side wall. That's essentially for fifties six degree pitches that
what you have a grip point that's really only right
underneath your foot where you don't feel the tip or
the tail. You're you're just like a hockey skate right
under your foot. And that can be UM, really really
important for safety when you're up on a you know,
face that you're suspended over eight hundred foot cliff and

(47:39):
you you know, your tip HiT's a wind drift and
your backwards and UM, I think there's a lot to that.
I think there's been some unbelievably smart creative engineers in
the sport over the last four or five decades. And
unfortunately it's it's a system. So it's kind of like
a house of cards. If you did everything right, but
one thing was wrong and the whole thing didn't work.
So in this case, a lot of it is revisiting

(48:01):
really old clever ideas and figuring out how to um,
you know, tweak them a little bit and see if
there's if there's value there. Okay, what about boots? What
was your revolution in boots? You certainly switched a number
of times. Yeah, and and boots roy is a frustration
point for me. I wish that, um, i'd had a
wealthy benefactor who would allowed me to build my own
boots UM because I felt like it's such a crazy

(48:25):
concept that we build this more or less chunk of
plastic that just bends and flexes and somehow it works.
And it does work, I won't deny that, but it
doesn't work as well as it should um. To me,
boots are much more of an engineering piece than any
other part of the system. Right is you should have
a boot that's controlled by either gas shocks, oil shocks, elastomers.

(48:47):
Something there shouldn't be just plastic. The bending and bubbling
where you know, in the whole front of the boot
where all the flexing and movement happens, is constantly being
open and closed to get your foot in it out
of it and like, if you buckle the buckles lightly tighter,
you get a totally different performance, you know, curved than
you would with a looser It's just to me that
was insane. So when I was on Nordica, I had

(49:08):
some breakthroughs in terms of basic understanding of what different
things could do to a boot, and that was my
favorite boot. Um. When I was on Atomic I I
did the same things and was able to create a
really good four event boot. I see the exact same
boot and slomgs supertoo downhill in one uh you know,
seven races in in fourteen days or seventeen days or something.

(49:29):
So um and on the same boot, and that that
was the sort of extent beyond that, I think boots
for garbage. So right now I see on a full tilt,
which is an old rightly um from the eighties, right
it literally is the mold from the eighties, and um
that that boot was the best boot on the world then,
and the only knock against it was it didn't turn

(49:50):
skis that well, and that was because the skis had
no side cut didn't turn very well. So now I
think that's by far the best boot on the planet.
So that's why I use. But I am trying to
push somebody to evolve the boot process because I think
there's a huge, huge capability for improvement there. Okay, specifically,
what makes the full tilt boot better flexes straightforward, so

(50:13):
you you flex linear u versus flexing out. So if
you were to bolt your typical ski boots to the
ground with a base down to flex forward, your knees
have to travel out, usually ten degrees, thirteen degrees whatever,
but they travel out, so if you're forward on the
front of your boot, you're actually increasing the edge angle.
And then when you with your knee moving in a
linear motion straight backwards, the edge decreases an angle. Even

(50:37):
though you're not decreasing your edge angle with your knees,
the skis decreasing because you're coming back to a neutral spot.
That to me, is a terrible design. It worked well
when the skis had no sidecut because as you drove
forward you could the ski would tip way up and
it would cause the front to kind of turn when
no sidecut, But now it just creates an overly aggressive
ski that causes all kinds of problems and knee injuries

(50:58):
and stuff. So that's one piece of it. They have
the interchangeability. I can switch my tongue out and go
from a six flex tongue to attend to a fourteen,
and I have this your thing tongue that they made me. Um,
they would be like the equivalent of like like a
sixteen or seventeen or eighteen. But um, you can change
the back the cuff the same thing. You can just
pop it off and put on a different one, and
um dramatically change the characteristics of the boots. So and

(51:20):
you slide it on like a slipper and no snow
gets in there. It's just it's just better. Okay, you
famously tweaked your boots on the door remains you were
added forward lean, So when it comes to forward lean
and ramp aangle, what were your thoughts. It's all it's
a system. It only matters about the system. If you're
skiing a ski that you can trust the front half

(51:41):
of the ski, and you needed certain things, you could
ramp up, But generally I was going the other way.
If I ramped up in the boot, I would de
ramp on the ski, So I would put lifters under
the toe piece of the binding. So even though I
had more ankle flexion, in the boot. That was just
to get the boot to line up correctly so that
I could so I could drive down with my knee
instead of tipping forward with my knee. So I always

(52:03):
like to drive down into the ski with my knee
versus so I needed ankle flection. If the boot was
too open, too upright, the angle was too open, then
you you were stuck. So I would always get that
to a place I liked, and then I would bring
the toe up to get me balanced on the ski. Definitely.
One of the common mistakes is too much ramp angle
and too much forward lean and too much delta between

(52:24):
the front and back of the bindings. Typical bindings are
you know, five millimeters lower in the front and the
back um, and that's when you compound that by ramp
angle inside the boot where the front is you know,
sometimes thirteen fourteen millimeters difference between the height of the
heel and the height of the toe. It's just this
whole big ramp and it makes it impossible for people
to ski forward because they're so tipped forward that if

(52:45):
they actually pushed forward, they would just fall over the
front of the skis. So um, I did everything, but
I would say, I ended up in a really good
place with fairly neutral to upright boots um with good
ankle flection, and I was moving my foot around inside
the boot quite a bit getting the right ankle position
versus where the boot actually liked to bend um. But

(53:06):
basically a flat ramp angle on the ski. Okay, that's
been a big evolution. If you go to laying, which
has been around since the fifties, hit it, say in
the sixties with the old skis, the Stratos, the DTA
meet VR seventies, they had a lot of ramp angle.
Now they're really flat. Okay, So on some level you're
saying that's followed you. How does that affect how you

(53:28):
ski on shape skis In the old days, when it
was so much harder to have a car of turn
you had to get the weight forward, do you feel
that that's less of an issue and it's more about
being centered now? Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're
going dead straight in a straight line on a shape
ski and you don't have to push forward at all,
you just tip over. That tip initiates so quickly with

(53:48):
that sidecut and pulls in so quickly that automatically your
inertia is going forward, and now the skis trying to
turn that way you are forward. You can't avoid being
for it. It's actually hard to not be for it
on a a dramatic side cut ski. Um, you're exactly right.
They were designed around and so is an orderkle grhand
Prix was designed around skis with no side cut. They
were much longer where you really had to you had

(54:11):
to twist and snap that front to get it to
do anything, and now you don't. Yeah, the ski does
all that for you automatically, and so a more upright
boot with much less ramp angle makes you more efficient.
You your skeletally, you're more lined up, You're able to
support more force and absorb more. Um. The challenges with kneflection.
You don't have a lot of suspension in the ski

(54:32):
system right from the bottom of the ski to the
all the way up. Your shin can't move that much,
so a lot of your suspension is from your knee
of your hip, and that's a really slow moving, long
travel suspender. Um. So I tend to still like some
ankle flection for absorption purposes, but again that's where the
full tilt is so much better than other boots is
that you you can't fold it over the top. You know,

(54:53):
I broke my ankle inside my boot twice because I
would hyper flex the boot and it would just pull
my ankle apart and snap off the bottom of my tibia.
And it's you can't do that in the full tail
because the instep is actually if your ankle joint is
here a normal boot, the instep might be there. In
the full tailed in step is like two inches away
from the front ear, so you it doesn't cause any lever.

(55:15):
You can't be pulled up out of the boot. You'll
just crunch against it, and it actually drives your heel
down and back no matter what you're doing. So it's
you know, for me, it's safer to okay. Now you
skied at the literally top level of the elite level.
And before you made it to the top, were you
ever intimidated by the competition? Now you had a long
history of competition. I was not a good ski racer,

(55:37):
but I ski with the World Cup freestyle people in
the moguls all the time, could ski better than them.
But once you're in competition, it's like this guy Scott
Brooks Mack he got better in competition. Okay, so what
was it like for you competing? Yeah, it was, there was, Um,
there was certainly times where I was intimidated. I mean,
there's a picture of Herman. It didn't happen early so

(56:00):
much because I was always like, look, I'm gonna get better.
I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. There was
a time where Herman was I think it was nine, Um,
he was on his full doping program, and the guy's
legs were just like he's on a table in a
lab with with the electro stim hooked up to his
legs and he's doing a full both quads, full flection,
like rocked out, and there's like striation that he had

(56:21):
muscles that I don't even know are on a normal
human that were like stacked on top of normal muscles.
And and I was just like, I mean, I put
me in the tank for like eight months because I
was like, this is garbage, Like there's no way, no matter.
He's better technically than Miami's on better skis, he's doping,
he's you know, better technically by a mile. Um, Like
what am I talking about here? And and uh, eventually

(56:43):
I overcame it but um, I was one of the
people who because of my ability to take risk and
and that was my strength, was my ability to sort
of motivate myself to take risk and be willing to
do that in competition and deal with the fact that
I was going to fail a lot of the time.
That was my biggest skill set and I recognized really
quickly even Herman didn't have that, I had them in

(57:04):
that category. That was my that was my trump card.
And honestly I set up specific split times, which you know,
not not that we have to touch on it, but
ski oh is my app that I've created now that
measures everything, measures exact speed, distance, travel, g forces, all
that stuff. During that time of like late high school
into early World Cup, I was setting up split times

(57:26):
because I needed to know how fast am I. I
needed some positive reinforcement. I couldn't finish races. I was like,
I only care about how fast I am for these
two gates. I need to know that I have like
elite level speed for two gates, and I would see
what I could do for two gates. In the middle,
of course, I would set up a specific split time
for six seconds, and and that really helped my confidence

(57:50):
because I was like, look, I haven't figured it out yet.
I certainly can't do it for fifty four gates in
a row. But for those two gates, I am way
faster than anybody in our country and possibly the world.
And that was sort of the thing that got me
over the deficiencies that I had in every other category
because I was kind of the middle of the road
type dude in fitness, technique, endurance, um. You know, equipment,

(58:16):
you know, tactics, understanding of hills, snow conditions, inspection, everything.
But in a couple of categories, I was elite level
and I had to figure out how to ulize those
and capitalize on them. Okay, to what degree was doping
a factor? To what degree is it's still a factor?
And you famously said you didn't care if anybody doped,
you could still beat them. Yeah, I don't know that

(58:37):
that's exactly what I said, but I think you covered
the gist of it. Um, I you know it was
It's always been a thing. I think it's been a
thing in virtually every sport since the beginning of time.
I mean, I think guys used to chew coca leaves
back in the old days, when they had little foot
race over in Greece. But um, I think that there's
there's a misperception that doping does it for you, that

(58:58):
you dope and then you're just better, and that's just
not the case. The guys. The the big, the big
advantage of doping as you can train more and you
recover more quickly. So half the doping stuff isn't even
enhancement things, it's recovery things. So if you can train.
I mean, the cost Lish family, I love them, they're
great people. They both had organ failure later on their
careers because they were on these programs that allowed them

(59:19):
to ski twice or three times as much as every
other World Cup racer. And they got really really good
because they trained three times as much as any other
World Cup racer, but it also caused organ failure. And
for me, I was kind of the mindset of like, look,
this isn't Tour de France, Tour de France. If you're
not doping, I don't think you have a realistic chance
of winning. You know, um, you know football, if you're

(59:42):
not doping, you know American football, you're likely to get
beat up throughout the season and not recover as well.
And you're gonna get thrown around by guys who are
that's but in ski racing because it's a minute or
because it's two minutes. I felt like if I was
willing to take the risk and great, I had to
adjust my criteria, I would have loved it w of
the races I was in, but that just wasn't in
the cards for me. I was like, I can get

(01:00:04):
through a minute, and it's more going to be about
my intensity and my risk taking and how I can
manage that. I'm I'm capable of beating even guys who
are I'd always dealt with it. Guys who are much
fitter than I was, much more technically sound, better equipment,
and I beat them before, so I didn't really see
that as a massive problem. I just felt like I
wasn't gonna win the overall very many times because guys

(01:00:25):
who were on that recovery program were just more fresh
all the time, and I was not. Okay, so you've retired,
then you wanted to come out of retirement using the
full tilt boots, using Bomber. Skis Head said, no, Ultimately,

(01:00:48):
you had a relationship with Bomber. Now I have a
relationship with cross and take us through that evolution. Yeah,
when I quit, I was I was well, well, good
and done, um, but I still had things a bit
like Rocky and Rocky six right. There was I wouldn't
say there was skeletons in the closet, but there was
things in the basement that I wanted to do and

(01:01:08):
you can't do them on your local ski hill. You
needed a World Cup forum and with the conditions and
the level of safety to actually put them to the test.
And it was more honestly, it wasn't about winning races.
It wasn't about proving anything. It was simply about understanding
what was possible with equipment and things like that. And
it was the first time I've had the handcuffs off

(01:01:30):
in eight years, um out from under head. And I
retired with the intent of not doing that. But then
I got on the skis. I skied on him for
this project for Samsung up in Lake Louise and my
my good friend Craig Daniels, who had been with me,
and we had some technology like Skio on the skis
that were measuring things. He was following me with a
with a big follow cam trying to get this footage

(01:01:50):
for them, and and he after about the fifth run,
he said, dude, I've never seen you ski like this.
He's like, if you raised a World Cup right now,
you would destroy people. I was like, I was like,
I know, I feel the same way. It's I'm able
to move because the boots flexed straightforward instead of out,
and because the skis were designed with much less sidecut
but a slight hinge point in the middle, I was

(01:02:11):
able to hold almost tuck down the steep pitch and
in like Louise where c turn would normally be in
a super G And he's like, I've never seen anything
like this, and that that got me excited because I
felt like my at that point it was really about
legacy and what I was giving back to the sport.
And I felt like if I understood that, and I
could evolve equipment and ski boots to be able to
allow your average person to have that same confidence level

(01:02:34):
and improvement, um, I'd be doing something good for the sport.
And it was a bummer that they shut me down
because I think in the end it would have been
great for head as well. Um, but it is what
it is, Okay. That must have been very frustrating. There
was no way to work that out. Johan Johan is
a peculiar cat. Uh. I love him, he's a good friend.
We're friends now still. Um. But that was a very

(01:02:57):
American business um litigation. I mean, he had he sent
me a seven hundred page he moved forums three times,
tied us up and send a seven hundred pages because
I wanted mine was one page that I sent him.
It was here's what I'm requesting, here's what we said before. Uh,
you're not paying me anything anyway. It's illegal for you

(01:03:18):
to block me from making a living in my in
my profession without pay, without compensation. That that's illegal in Colorado, California,
anywhere in the US. Basically, Uh, he moved for hum
three times to jump that around. All he was trying
to do is tie us up until the season started
so I couldn't do it. And UM, you know, I
can respect somebody who's efficient at what they want to do,
and he was, so I can respect that. But in

(01:03:39):
the end, I think we all lost out. Okay, bomb Or,
after you got involved, turned into more of an expensive
boutique SKI. Ultimately you left and went to cross on.
Tell us about that. Yeah, I think you know, coming
from where I was at that moment where there was
still potential to race, there was still this development. Then
as that game unrealistic with Johan kind of putting his

(01:04:02):
foot down on me, Um, we moved into that other
space and it was not where I wanted to be.
So UM, I had a contract, I wrote it out.
I did my best for them, UM, wish them all
the best, but wanted to go with a ski company
where I could see my vision really come true. And
quite honestly, I don't care about building skis for super
rich people or I think skiings expensive enough as it is.

(01:04:25):
I went through it as a young person. I would
love to build skis and make them good enough that
I could sell a million pairs of skis a year
for two hundred dollars a pair, and build them for
eighty dollars a pair and sell them all direct and
make twenty dollars a pair, and I make a bunch
of money. Um. You know. And even then, if I
did that, I'd probably dropped the price to one fifty,

(01:04:46):
because I think it's obnoxious that skiings as expensive as
it is and as inaccessible as it is, UM, and
I would love to see that change that, so they
were kind of going the opposite direction with Crossing. At
least we have the you know, full raine and really
interesting background coming Chase coming from aerospace, and access to
crazy smart engineers and unique performance materials and practices coming

(01:05:09):
from an industry that's very unlike skiing. UM, and and
we are trying to do some really unique stuff in
this first year. I mean we start in June and
we have two different models, three really that are absolutely
exceptional at the top of their individual classes in the sport.
And I'm looking forward to next year. Okay, but is
your goal with Crossing to bring the price down and

(01:05:31):
turn volume way up? Yeah? Eventually, UM, you know, I
think it'll be some re engineering. I think there will be.
There's a few steps, intermediary steps that have to be
seen to first UM and obviously we have to be
economically viable to get there as well. So my long
term goal is yes, is that, um you need a
certain economic model to to make it work. But I

(01:05:53):
think we're pointing in the right direction absolutely, and ideally
I'd love to build race keys. Again. I think it's
it's embarrassing that we don't have any American aid race skis,
and uh, every other country as you alluded to before
with you know, Atomic Rozzi, you know every company. Maybe
Italy is the only comping that doesn't really have a
homegrown superpower race ski. But um, I want to build

(01:06:15):
American made race skis and really kind of give the
Americans advantage for once. Let's talk about the crossing skis
that are available. Now, did you have a hand in
developing those? I did everything from exact side cut, earlier rise,
exact construction everything. Okay, so what makes them special and
different from what's presently on the market. Um, we'll focus

(01:06:37):
on the one A team because that's the one that
I did a good job on and got lucky as well.
And I it's a twenty seven meter radius, so if
you know anything about radius, that's a very long radius.
That's a fist legal giant slalom radius ski basically, um
and it's and so with that long radius, you're not
going to get the same turn that you would on

(01:06:57):
an arc. But it's a one A team underfoot, which
you wouldn't get that turn even if you made the
shovel huge because there's so much torsional for so, I
matched the point where there's traditional camera where the skis
this way to the point where there's early rise, which
is really really subtle. When you stick the skis together
and you push the base together, there's a tiny little
slot of light that comes in between them earlier, and

(01:07:18):
that's the radius that you use there, and where that
is compared to the sidecut, how the ski is still
getting wider, and then where that peeks out, and then
how you use the actual tip curve, which is how
the ski comes up off the snow. That's actually what
you use to dictate your radius, is that that early
rise in the tip curve. So I'm cheating the system
where I have a radius ski that you can ski

(01:07:41):
seventy miles an hour on it and it doesn't jump around.
It's not crazy. You can make little slow turns that
aren't arcs, they're just slid. But it's super consistent and
reliable and easy to balance on and forgiving works awesome
and deep powder sloft chunky snow because it just doesn't
hook you on the tail. You never get stuck in
the back seat, you never get pitched forward. But then
still skis like a seventeen sixteen radio ski. When you

(01:08:04):
tip it up because the actual initiation is coming from
the curve of the ski versus the side cut, so
it's it's nuanced and it's uh. I built it very traditionally,
you know, nothing magical in it, which again allows me
to reduce the cost down. Um. And yeah, I got lucky.
I knew it would be a very good powder ski.
I was confident there. What I was shocked at is

(01:08:26):
how good it was on hard snow, on ice and
on groom trails. And the reason that it was much
better than I thought was because I had never skied
on a ski that was at that shallow of radius.
So you know, the most you see is two three
and even that is usually on a really stiff ski
that's just for like high speed bombing and powder runs,

(01:08:46):
you know, huge lines in Alaska and stuff like that. Um,
this thing is a normal construction, fairly soft, but when
you ski it on hard snow, it just absolutely rips turns.
I was my hip was on the ground for six
g s turns in a row down a groom or
first thing in this season, and I came out of
that and I was like, it exceeded at every expectation
I had on the harder still which my goal is
always to build a ski that works on a big variety.

(01:09:08):
There's lots of companies that build really good skis for
one specific condition or type of skier. I want something
that works for everybody, and I got really lucky this year. Okay,
conventional wisdom and needs to say you're not conventional. Is
a hundred and eight team would be a powder ski,
not a big mountain Alaska powder ski. And maybe you
have a hundred and five or a hundred and six
for cried your daily riders, hundred maybe for hard snow.

(01:09:31):
You have something somewhere in the eighties. Hey, do you
agree with that philosophy or is that horseship? Um? I
would say it's certainly not horseship, right. And the reason
for that is just as I just stated right before
that it was a lot of companies make skis that
are good in one narrow segment. So if you love

(01:09:52):
Stokely or you love Blizard or you love Atomic, you
need five pairs of skis and you need the quiver
you just said. I would even go narrowing that. I
would go down to something the seventies for a hard ice.
If you're an East Coast ski and you're going up
to Cannon or or Stow, you're gonna want something narrower
the eighties. But but then everything else you said is
virtually right, and you're gonna have a great time if

(01:10:12):
you can bring five or six pairs of skis and
switch from morning to mid lunch to afternoon. If you
had a powder day in the morning, and what I
believe that if you do it right you can have
virtually you still kind of need two pairs. Um. I
skied on pretty firm snow. It didn't snow for about
three weeks. There was smicy patches that got scratched down.
I didn't I wouldn't say I enjoyed skiing on the

(01:10:34):
one eight teens. If I was skiing in sugar Loaf
when it hadn't snowed in two weeks, and you know
that refrozen groom stuff where you barely leave a track
in it when you're working right, the one teens probably
wouldn't have been a really enjoyable ski there. I would
have dropped right down to a one seventies six underfoot
I mean a seventy six underfoot um, but a much
more mela radius than than a typical carving ski. And

(01:10:57):
but beyond that that one een it covers from Big Mountain, Alaska.
I mean, like shoots, it's a touring ski. It's super light.
It's it's as light as some of the high level
touring skis. Um you can ski it fast. He's getting
crud junk. I have some videos of my buddy that
I mentioned before, just going crazy on the thing. And
he's all of a d thirty five pounds, soaking wet,

(01:11:18):
and he's one underfoot and he's shredding these hard wind baked,
sun baked moguls um bouncing and shooting around and just landing.
And they're always right where they belong. They're always right,
you know, grips right under his foot. He's totally on it.
And that that ski covers out here, it covers every day.
There's no other ski that I would ski on out here. Um,
you know, on the East coast, you'd want something narrower.

(01:11:40):
But I'd ideally like to get it down to two
two pairs. Okay, there's a whole school of thought now.
Really the business was changed by the Razzie one oh six,
the Yellow Soul seven, And there are people who have
been in the business a long time say this is
not good for your knees to have wide skis. Do
you have a lot on them? Yeah, it sounds like

(01:12:03):
live s tales stuff to me. I've heard a lot
of people saying that, you know, we had FIST regulations,
right we scrapped When I was on head, they made
the skis now out of University of Salzburg, which is
Austrian government controlled, and had we were kicking the crap
out of Atomic, So of course the University of Salzburg
came up with some data that said if you make

(01:12:24):
the skis two millimeters wider, everyone's gonna be way more safe.
So we all had to scrap thousands of pairs of
the fastest down will skis on the planet because they
came up with some arbitrary data. And then two years
later the injuries were worse and they said, up, we
were wrong, and but you couldn't add edge with to
make your skis wider. So we scrapped all those keys
and started new and that helped Atomic because we're all

(01:12:46):
back on level playing field. And then two years later
they realized their data was garbage and they scrapped it.
So it's I think that's where that comes from I
would say that a wide ski with a lot of
sidecut because your shovel it becomes so big that it
actually can hit and it has a huge surface area
that if you hit a bump, or you hit loose
snow or a pile of slough, um, you're gonna you're

(01:13:09):
gonna get a huge reaction if it's not designed just
right um. And that huge reaction oftentimes goes to your
knees and you're back. And so I would say a
wide ski should have very little side cut, and you
have to figure out a better way to make it turn.
If you do that, I don't think it has any
impact on safety. Okay, let's talk about materials. The big
breakthrough was metal in the fifties and sixties. Then we

(01:13:31):
went to fiberglass. Okay, we had the strato of the
VR seventeen, but then we had Rozzie the Rock five
fifty for gs that was metal. Then Solomon entered the business.
They had a cap ski. So the traditional thought now
is you want metal for harder surfaces, for torsional rigidity.
And then you talk about one eight teens. Conventually they

(01:13:54):
will have no metal in them. What's your philosophy on
materials and construction. Well, metal is not great for torsion
in the sense of the properties itself. What it's good
for is torsion and traditional layup is comes from shearing
effect of the of the material. So if you have
a bunch of layers, those layers when they twist, they
have to rub against each other. They don't just twist,

(01:14:16):
uh you know, as one big chunk, they actually shear.
And that's where you get your metal doesn't it has
a hard bonding property. The surface has no other particles
that it creates a really solid bonds of Tortionally, it
affects it that way. But the property itself, metal twists
actually much easier than glued fiberglass. Fiberglass is the strongest
for torstional uh control. Um. The reason we don't use

(01:14:38):
metal traditionally, and you know wider skis is just weight.
You know, it's just too it's just too damn much material.
You'd use a piece of metal this wide and uh,
you know, it's it's too much. But the other part,
metals really damp and would metal together have a really
interesting frequency um dampening properties. So you know, we we
always use you know goodwood cores in our wide skis,

(01:14:59):
but we're using rubber instead of metal and fiberglass instead
of metal. So fiberglass to control the tortion because as
it gets wider, you can really control torson very effectively. Um,
you don't add all that weight. And then he use
rubber inserts around the edges in certain areas to to
dampen the vibration and have a damp ski. And Um again,

(01:15:20):
I'm a believer that there's no one way to build
a great ski. Um. Like I said, I'm the first
to give credit to companies that have built great skis,
and there's a lot of different ways to go about it.
I want to do it in a way that's super consistent,
gives people a huge range of of you know, conditions
that the skis perform optimally on. And a ski that
one eighteen I put a dude on it the other day.

(01:15:41):
He's never skied before, his first day on snow. He's
one underfoot and had an awesome time. They switched into
a black crow at lunch because he was curious, and
he went immediately back to the team. He said that
thing was garbage compared to this. It's so much easier
to balance on this and control of the edges. So
I think that done correctly, the sky is gonna work

(01:16:01):
better in all conditions and for all skiers. And maybe
that's optimistic, but it seems like it's working right now.
Let's just talk about course. Course, we're all would the
breakthrough in the seventies was foam, then we went back
to wood. Dina starts putting some foam stringers in what's
your philosophy there? Yeah, I think I think hybrid um. Honestly,
I think that's the application for carbon fiber and potentially

(01:16:24):
other exotic materials as well as stringers vertical stringers of
carbon fiber. Uh, think of like an H box of wood.
So an H of really thin but super dense wood, oak,
beach poplar, you know, maple, um, ironwood, There's all kinds
of wood that would be really interesting but super duper
thin in an H. So you have an I beam

(01:16:45):
type structure which adds a lot of the properties. Then
fill the top and bottom of the H with foam
with carbon stringers um. Ultimately, I've tried to have that
core built for six years. Hasn't happened yet. I'm patients,
so hopefully through. I believe that a hybrid core will
will be where we end up. Okay, but we'll foam
break down like it did in the seventies or just

(01:17:06):
not really a structural material. No, it's it's not. In
seventies there was they had bad foam. I mean now
they have aerospace foam that does you can have do
anything as zero temperature fluctuations. It's that can't shatter. It
has like a fifty thousand and a half life and
uh fully recyclable. I mean my goal ultimately is to
have an exoskeleton ski, so carbon fiber um metal elastomer's

(01:17:30):
frame and then foam injected and then metal top or
potentially fiberglass or high density rubber polymer top over it,
and then you'd have a ski that everything was dictated
by this skeletal system underneath, and that's how all your
flex was dictated. The foam dampens it, and the tops
just to protect it. When you're done with a ski,
just heat it up, peel at apart, and everything is recyclable.

(01:17:52):
I think that's it's a shame that nobody has taken
that seriously. There's millions and millions and millions of cubic
meters of waste coming out of the skins every single
year because of that. Okay, if one listens to you
in the landscape and the news and podcast et cetera,
you seem to know everybody you have a relationship with
all these technical people. Did they come to you because

(01:18:15):
if you were fame or is your personality such that
people end up being drawn to you? I don't know, Um,
I only know the results. I can't speak to the motivation. UM,
I know a lot of people. I enjoy learning and
talking about concepts and ideas. I'm not a talk about
this person or gossip type person. I like talking about

(01:18:38):
inspirational things that um haven't been done or you know,
creative ways to collaborate. So I think that's appealing. I
think we're in an interesting time right now where you know,
connectivity is much easier than it was ten years ago,
right with the Internet. And I mean, you can get
to anybody, so if somebody wants to get to me,
they can get to me. So UM, but yeah, I
feel very lucky to have, um had the relationships I've

(01:19:01):
had and continue to grow because you know, I don't
know nearly enough yet. And uh, I learned from a
lot of really smart people that I surround myself with
all the time. Okay, but you're involved in your app Skio,
you have the ski company, you have the educational thing.
How many projects are you actively involved in and what

(01:19:22):
are they? Thirteen? Uh? Really actively? Um, but there's another
six or seven that are kind of where I'm a
I'm a role player. Um, but not it's not my
primary thing. Uh. Snow Cookie, which is Skio Crossing Ski Company,
I c L is my academy, Rivo sunglasses, goggles, helmet development,

(01:19:45):
trying to make things safer and better. Um, my relationship
up here in Big Sky which is Spanish peaks, Moonlight,
forward facing real estate, all that stuff, Kuto which is
a C too C booking platform, so you would book
me to take you skiing here. And sky First is
having to pay eight hundred bucks for an instructor. Um,
a really good dude. Uh. Friends started that and I

(01:20:07):
help him as tech. My clothing company that I'm not
officially involved with any longer because they're kind of plateau
ng but um. Alchemist Alpine uh company out of l
A cannabis and medical stuff around cancer research and swim
Pals are wearable like a watch that strounding prevention. After
losing my daughter, we we got really involved in that
and want to stop that from happening, so we were

(01:20:29):
inventing some new stuff. I'm working with the Nest guys
Jamie simmon Off and guys at at Amazon for all
that snow Bonn, which is the indoor ski hall. I'm
a shareholder and it's outside of Denver now, but we're
working on partnering with resorts and replicating that so that
in these population hubs in Houston and Dallas and Atlanta,
you can have these kids who would never be exposed

(01:20:50):
to skiing go in and for thirty bucks experienced skiing
and then package something together to have them go up
to a local area for a tenth the cost and
UH and get out. Their APEX is UH Technologies company
that I'm in through my roommate at c v A,
and they optimize UM everything from data security now that
especially with COVID, everyone's going digital. It's a huge new

(01:21:11):
push in that space. And their Ninja's flow code is
Tim Armstrong's company was the CEO at A O L
when I was there ten years ago, and we became
friends and that's an advanced QR code. It's the fastest,
quickest scanning QR code. So like now when you go
into restaurant, your menu is that QR code. He has
those that take you to a flow page that can
do incredible stuff. He's just a wizard. Romp and Roost.

(01:21:33):
We're building kids stuff because we have six six kids alive.
We would have seven if we had lost my daughter,
um parents stuff these you know, uh packing plays and
travel accessories. When you go to a restaurant, how come
it's such a pain in the ass with the high
chairs and all that. And then Zortech, which is a
shoe company that's doing smart shoes, so very similar to
um to Skio where you get all his data out

(01:21:56):
of your skiing the smart shoes, I want to put
in Schuman's residents in of the shoe with a p
c oh so you're basically like you're walking around with
your feet in the grass or feet in the dirt
all day because I think this electromagnetic field disturbances we're
getting right now are kind of messing with a lot
of people and so and then at the same time
as giving you Shuman's Residents all day in your shoes.

(01:22:17):
They're also giving you, you know, har rate variability and
steps and stress levels and stress patterns. Hey, when you
walk down this street you're super stressed every day, Maybe
don't walk down that street. So, um, it's a that's
there's about like I said, six more, but um, those
are those are the main ones that I'm pretty heavily
involved with. Okay, how do you have the time? How
do you have the time to have even one of
those in ski? Those those fit into the six percent

(01:22:41):
of the time that I'm not dealing with my kids
and and uh and wife and eating drinking wine. But
are you actively involved? Needless to say, having your name
attached to something is beneficial to an enterprise, But to
what those are? Those are all? Those are all very active.
Those are things where I have calls, maybe not really,
but very active all the way from R and D

(01:23:03):
to marketing to partnerships and getting things lined up, I
mean everything. Those are Those are heavy involvement. And I'm
I'm efficient, I am. I mean, you know, I dropped
the ball all the time and every one of them.
I'm very upfront. I'm like, look if I if I
tell you I'm not not getting on that call. I'm
not getting on the call. If you want to go
find somebody else, fine, But like you know, so I'm

(01:23:24):
open because I don't have the ability. I'm not a
nine to five or I have. I literally fit that
into the ten percent of the time where I'm not
managing my kids and all that. I mean we have
we have three kids who are two are under in
the house, and it's there's not a lot of time
that I can get this. This is a miracle that
I've had this time. My wife's being an angel right now. Okay,
just to go a little deeper and then just a
couple more topics. Uh, what's the difference between Scio and

(01:23:46):
this product that is being heavily hyped now Carve? Yeah,
car I mean honestly, I love what Carve was doing.
I've been in conversation with them. I know. The problem
with that is their mechanisms. So they're doing it on
the boot, They're doing it in the sole of the boot.
You know, I'm never one to hate on anybody, but
to disrupt somebody's boot, you have to, you know, insert

(01:24:08):
this thing underneath your footboard. You're do what you're talking about.
If you're doing your boots, right, there's no space in
there to put that in there, so you're doingfications. But
then but then also you're only able to capture certain
data because the boot only does certain things. And what
we did ours is three sensors. It's one on either
ski just in front of the binding, and then one
on the center of your chest. So we're talking about

(01:24:29):
rotational force. It uses your phone and all the telemetry
on your phone as well to have all that um
but we can do rotation foraft movement. They do that
through sensors in your foot. But again, you're you're getting
When I skied on carve, I ripped fifteen ridiculously hard
g s turns, perfect balance, you know, in and out consecutive.

(01:24:50):
It said that I was sucking and then I slid
a bunch of turns, just kind of bopping along super
low edge angle, and it was like, great job, great job.
So I think they have work to do on their
algorithm engine. I think there's a place for it. I
think a ton of people are going to benefit from it,
but they're in a they went a route that was
more difficult to achieve what I think ultimately is the goal,

(01:25:12):
which is to have people have really good, clean, objective
data that represents what it's supposed to represent. I can
tell you from my experience I was skiing well, and
it was saying I was sucking, and then vice versa.
Ours is all built around you know. The algorithm is
is legit, there's no if you're skiing better, it knows
you're skiing better. And the in the centerpiece on your
chest is really really important based because as you know,

(01:25:35):
skiing is so much of it's how you're rotating, how
you're initiating, how your foraft balance is shifting through a turn,
what your skis are doing vibrationally, if your edges are matched, um,
what your pressure is on either edge. We can get
all that, um, you know, very easily, as well as
you know all the other things that they can get. Okay,
I grew up during the ski boom. Okay, everybody skied

(01:25:56):
in the sixties and early seventies. Having lived long enough,
I know there are other of things. You know, there
was a snowboard boom. Snowboard is actually decreasing slightly, not
that just did a big thing. How do we reinvigorate skiing? Um?
I think accessibility. Uh, if you look at the barriers
to entry and skiing. It's no wonder that we have

(01:26:16):
like an eight percent atrician rate, so eight out of
tend people who ski for the first time don't try
it again. Um that's been flat for about the last
thirty five years. So UM, that's a problem if you're
if you're charging people enormous amounts the snow Bonn, So
if you combine just and this is a big part
of it, right, This is why all these projects become
doable is because they're not these off on tangent silo

(01:26:40):
little things. They're all connected. Snow Bonn is an indoor
ski hall that allows people to learn to ski in
about thirty minutes, from never having put ski boots on
before to being able to go up onto a resort
in ski blue runs snowplow, turn either direction, hockey stop
on either side in twenty minutes for thirty dollars. So
I want to replicate that in population hubs, and I

(01:27:02):
want to tie it to the resorts because the lifetime
value of a skier at a resort for Veil, for
you know, Ask and whoever, that lifetime value is enormous.
They can afford to give them a break for that
first time, to get them interested, to get them psyched,
um get them hooked if you will. So that whole
package is one piece that ties in with Crossing, because
I'm building special skis that actually work better on the

(01:27:23):
carpet because it is this crazy, you know, big inside
treadmill with carpet on it or plastic key carpet, and
the skis don't work well. They're just using typical skis
de tuning them and like, okay, give it a go.
They need skis designed for that. So we're doing that
with Crossing. My goal over the next four years is
to reduce the cost of skis um go direct to customers.

(01:27:44):
I mean we see retails going to the tank right,
retails tanking everywhere, and COVID only accelerated that. But there's
no reason you need to go into a ski shop
to buy skis like to just asn't like with thirty
day money that guarantee. Here's the skis two hundred bucks.
Instead of selling them to a retailer for bucks and
then they sell them to you for seven hundred bucks,
we just sell them straight to you. We can make

(01:28:04):
our margins, everything works, and you pay two hundred bucks,
so reduce the cost of everything incrementally. There. Um, you
know they've already done certain steps, the Icon Pass, Epic Pass,
those are I think incremental steps in the right direction.
I honestly think there's gonna be a new boom of
very small resorts. You need traffic for that, and that
hasn't supported that in the past because we've had no

(01:28:26):
growth in the sport. But once these things are put together,
there's these adventure parks that are incredibly profitable in Europe
and they drive people to these other more more exclusive,
more expensive involved operations. I think that when we spool
out thirty five fifty hundred snow bonds in these population
hubs and then we can run a ski resort that

(01:28:47):
only operates from December eighteen till March and it has
two lifts. You're only accommodating people who are the first
three years of skiing, and then once they're better, sure
graduate up to some others. But as you know, I mean,
Christina Cosnick, Lindsey Vaughan, you know myself, steen mark on
your person. They grew up on mountains. There were no

(01:29:08):
bigger than my driveway is like, I mean, we're talking
a couple hundred vertical feet you don't need, uh, you know,
the Pyrenees to to go out and enjoy skiing and
have a great time. So all those things I think
play together. I think the industry has been remarkably inefficient
at converting new skiers. And you know, but look at
ale stock prices. I mean, they're doing all right, so

(01:29:30):
I can't really pick on them too much. But I
think that's you know, you go through the early life
complaining about all these people doing things wrong, and at
some point you gotta step up and start realizing somebody's
just got to do it. So that's the phase of
it now. And again that parlays with vos. You know,
everything everything I work on is all aligned in terms
of that stuff, so it ends up being a bit

(01:29:51):
more efficient that way. Okay, very quickly, too quick tips
piece of advice for people who are experienced skiers technique wise,
Um yeah, I mean to me, upper lower body separation
is the biggest conundrum for people is with sidecut skis.
Now you can commit down the hill so much more

(01:30:13):
if your skis finishing a turn, coming around and you're
used to coming up, becoming neutral and then initiating your
new turn and going down and making a turn. You've
seen it in World Cup for years now. But I
think the exciting thing is get on a really good ski.
Stokely makes a really good carving ski. We make, I
believe the best carving ski. UM A bunch of companies
make a good one. And by good I mean super reliable.

(01:30:36):
It's never gonna do anything crazy on you, because what
we're talking about is finishing your turn. As you're coming
across the fall line, your upper body goes over the
top of your skis in a low position. So for
that little moment, you're basically just letting go. You're relaxing,
your knees are super bent, your ass is really far back.
You're just traveling over your skis straight down the hill.
As that happens, you're putting your place self in a

(01:30:57):
position where you can back up a ski edge angle
that's really high, and it's basically upper lower bodies sepreasure.
You're continuing to turn one way while your body is
going over the top, and then your edges switch really
quickly from one edge to the other, and the skis
initiate so quickly that they dive down underneath you and
pick you back up. And I think for experienced gears
that's a really something they haven't felt before, and it's

(01:31:20):
it changes entirely the sport because you're in a long legged,
really powerful position all the time. The only time where
you're in that crunched up awkward phase, there's no pressure
on You're just flying down the hill. And for me,
that's how you know that that's the most exciting thing
about carving skis. Okay, needless to say, you can make
a deal with any of the major companies and endorsement
deal and get a big check. Are you into it

(01:31:41):
with cross and not only to make the skis for
the upside? And to what degree? You know if these
some of these figures are published, but we don't know
what you did with the money. How are you doing
financially and how are your compatriots who were successful in
the circuit doing financially? Um? I mean I'm still working,
so I'm not doing that good. Um. But it granted,

(01:32:01):
my kids and wife cost me a lot of money.
They know how to they know how to spend it.
But um, you know, I think we're we're comfortable. I'm
very fortunate that I do things that I love to
do and I don't do them for money. But I'm
fortunate enough to be valuable enough to companies where I
can get compensated in a way that makes things makes
the wheel turn. Um. But you know the other skiers generally, Um,

(01:32:24):
you know, if you weren't number one in the world
and winning a lot of races, your work in day job. Now,
I mean Europe is different. Their icons. They they get
sort of taken care of because they're in these semi
you know, socialist type countries where they get a lodge
or they're they do different things. They're kind of set up.
But they also have such a different culture over there

(01:32:45):
where it's not an economic ladder. They just they like
to do things. So they just run a restaurant and
host people because they like to Um. But you know,
I could if you got any tips, I could certainly
use some cash. But um, I'm doing okay, Okay, do
you regret not going to college? No, Now, I went
to lots of colleges. I just didn't go to college

(01:33:06):
per se. Um. I was at colleges all over the
country and all over the world. Um, but no, no,
I'm a I'm an easy study like coaches that I
was uncoachable. I think that's not really true. I think
they were just beating their head against the wall and
something that I was very committed to, and unfortunately it
didn't align with what they wanted me to do. But
I learned things really quickly. More or less, stuff that

(01:33:26):
I need to figure out, I can figure out really quickly.
And as I said, I'm I have some of the
best mentors in the world, the smartest people, um, that
I've found, and I learned really quickly from them. Okay,
you've gone on record for political issues and how you
view the country. What is your view of the overall
state of the United States? And do we have any hope? Uh? Yeah,

(01:33:49):
we have hope, um, not a lot. But you know,
the for me, the problem is that we've we've diverged
away from sort of the concept. The concept was that
the people would sort of semi govern that we would.
But when you have three million people with hugely diverse
backgrounds and priorities and all this stuff, you have to
modify the system. It's it can't be a you know,

(01:34:12):
nationally governed, it has to be stay governed. I think
micro micro governing bodies need to take more responsibility and
and and have flexibility there Um. That to me is
is where our salvation lies is. You know, you can
have different views, you can have different philosophies and different
lifestyles and different stuff, but it still has to fall
within the parameters of the national That was the philosophy

(01:34:34):
in the beginning. But it wasn't so real then because
communication took three weeks to get a letter from Colorado
back to Washington. But um or Virginia. But in this case,
you know, you just have to we can't have this
this crazy um. You know, these extremist groups that that
stuff is garbage. I don't know the solution there. UM
that that's problematic because there really are hate groups and

(01:34:56):
then they just they're just angry and want to do damage.
But some of that comes to um a cultural um.
Feel good about what you're doing, and feel good about everybody.
And that's because we've sucked for quite a while. I mean,
I'm not a US hater, but I find it really
funny that people say we're the best country in the
world when they haven't really been to a lot of
other countries. I've been to a lot of countries, and
I can say I think Daniel Tosh says, it is

(01:35:17):
that have you ever been to Fiji, like maybe you
go there. You've been to New Zealand, like you know,
universal healthcare, like you could show up there and break
your leg and they take care of everything for you know,
Bill is not perfect healthcare, like you know. I think
there's a lot of things that unfortunately our government is
incapable of doing because of the structure. And I don't
know if that's going to change, But on a state

(01:35:39):
and micro level, I think as we transition the renewable
energies and we kind of I think we're gonna see
a massive influx of job creation and and hopefully more
productive direction than we've been for the last two hundred years.
Um with you know, fossil fuels revolution that was that
was inherently terminal, like it didn't you know, capitalism is
terminal in and of itself. You can't always be uh um,

(01:36:01):
you know, a capitalist culture exclusively. There always has to
be some balance. We already have that. The irony is
that people ignore the fact that we've been we have
socialist programs. We have since the beginning. We've we've always
had them. So it's just finding the balance there and
hopefully um getting people excited to embrace the differences of
our country because unfortunately or unfortunately, there's always gonna be

(01:36:22):
huge variants in our in our people, in our in
this country. Final question, this is one of perception for
those of us who follow ski racing. Yes, you had
that instant success with the K two fours, You did
very well in the two thousand two Olympics. Then there
was all this hope, in this hype which we get
every four years in the Olympics United States. You were

(01:36:43):
the golden boy. The success was not there, needless to say, Also,
what I learned today, you're talking about certain equipment issues
which were not well publicized. In addition, you've gone your
own way in a country that thrives on group paint,
group think, but all the pushing forward is by individuals
who were frequently hated in them lauded. In addition, you

(01:37:06):
commented did the play by play so to speak of
the Olympics, and as opposed to being bobbed BIATI just
being a national cheerleader. You got into the specifics of
racing and took a lot of flak for that. So
the question is, how do you feel about your perception
of yourself. Do you think it should be changed? Do

(01:37:29):
you care if it's changed? Do you bothered if it's
not changed. No, I'm not bothered and I don't care. Um,
you know, I feel like that was a big learning
experience for me. It was oh six right right. I
was petulant. I take responsibility for my own behavior. But
it was also not an anomaly. I didn't. It wasn't
like that was my time where I blew up. I

(01:37:50):
was that way all my entire life. And the fact
was I was unapologetic. I just I said, look, I
did my best. I won the I was winning the
combined by three seconds, right, ted end up winning the
goal there. I was three seconds ahead of him after
the first run of slalom, and I was disqualified. Like,
you know, there's things that happened that they could have
changed everything there they didn't. Um. You know, when I
walked away from that, I was definitely uh you know,

(01:38:13):
I was immature and I was not prepared for what
I was dealing with. I was the top gun on
World Cup. I had I was taking of all the
demands and press and everything else, and I just I
wasn't good enough and I needed to improve and I
knew that so UM when I came back after the
OH nine semi retirement into two thousand and ten, UM,
I was really proud of how I'd evolved in that

(01:38:35):
four year span. And I came back a different type
of person, much more capable, much more broad skill set,
capable of dealing with real adult things and and being
clear about my prerogatives, but also much more um effectively
talking about what I felt was important and how I
could make that work with your average you know viewer

(01:38:57):
who's just an American who wants you to say, go America,
where the best? So I'm gonna win for you, guys
like I understood that in that time frame. And it
took that failure in OH six and all the fallout
of that to learn. I mean, it's just the reality is,
you learned through those struggles and and uh, I've been
super I wouldn't change a thing about that. It was
an ass kicking at the time, but it's not the

(01:39:17):
first as kicking I've taken. It certainly won't be the last.
So to come into ten and win three medals and
really kind of give the American people what they wanted
in my on my own terms and with that expression
and my my comfort level. Unfortunately I missed that stop
on the on the attributes trade train when I was
being created that I didn't feel satisfaction about that part

(01:39:38):
of it, like I proved anyone wrong or anything. I
just felt good that I had evolved and hopefully matured
a little bit where I was more capable and not
making the same stupid mistakes i'd make made before. Yes,
but at the Olympics, Lindsey Vaughan was the heroine with
one gold medal, and you had a better performance than
anyone had ever had in the Winter Olympics skiing as

(01:40:00):
a male, and they gave you a fraction of the attention.
But as as you said, no, as you said, there's nothing,
especially American culture, putting somebody on the pedestal and then
they want to knock the pedestal out, you know, and
then they want to build you back up, and then
they want to knock the pedestal. The thing that was
interesting about that is because I retired in oh nine
and I didn't start my Olympic run until August. I mean,

(01:40:22):
I was fatten out of shape and had no skis,
no technician, no nothing going into the World Cup season. Um,
they didn't have any time before I was six, and
that summer going into six, I was on a cover
of Time, Newsweek, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated. You know, that
was the build up, That was the pedestal. They had
no time. Nobody could scramble. They'd already they'd already put
Lindsay as their person. They were pot committed to her.

(01:40:44):
So the fact that she delivered, they were on board.
They were like, yeah, see, we were right. She's our
American hero and they had for me. I was a
side note. Because they had they couldn't validate, you know,
not the individuals, but mainstream press likes to be right right,
So the fact that I did well didn't help them.
They were They weren't upset individually, but as a as
an industry, they were upset because they didn't have the scoop.

(01:41:07):
They didn't have it, you know, set up right to
capitalize on that. And so, um, it's exactly what I expected.
And as I said, I was very aware of that
by that point, and they didn't upset me at all.
I was really proud and excited to have you know,
like I said, matured and got better and then delivered.
I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn't
matter how good you are, how mature you are, It
comes down a hundreds of the second. You know how

(01:41:28):
tight those races were. And at the end of the day,
those performances that I put down there my the actual
skiing I did to get that gold medal in the
combined what I did in that slow on course was
was nothing short of a miracle. I mean I was
that was the that was the pinnacle of what you'd
hoped for of yourself in an Olympic environment. And uh yeah,

(01:41:49):
to do it after having let people down and let
myself down the way I didn't know six was was
a miracle. And then obviously fourteen I pulled off, you know,
a bronze medal that I was as proud of as
any medal that i'd ever you know, had in any event.
Why is that the night before my brother it's supposed
to go to that Olympics, that he was going to

(01:42:09):
go as a snowboarder. It would have been the first
one we've been at together, he passed away into um
and before I should have won the downhill, I was
crushing guys in the training runs conditions change, we could.
We didn't have the skis to be competitive on the bottom.
I was losing a second and a half on the
bottom just going straight across, you know, eight hundred yards
um and I end up losing in my stronger events,

(01:42:31):
and the super gew was kind of the last one.
And uh, the night before I took my goggle strap
off my helmet and I replaced it with with one
of those um physio bands, you know, those bands like
the red and green that you used to stretch out,
And so I replaced it with one of those. And
I thought about doing that for ten years. I don't
know it's I put it in the wind tunnel. We tested.
We knew that that made a difference, and I said, look, tomorrow,

(01:42:54):
a hundredth is going to make the difference. And so
I replaced that for the first time in four hundred
and thirty World Cup races, I replaced it and tied
for third place. So one hundredth slower and I have
no medal. And I come out of the Olympics, you know,
dealing with all the press of no medals. Just that
one bronze medal saves all that stuff. But also it

(01:43:15):
was it was really indicative of my level of of
commitment and you know, and ingenuity and and and self reliance.
I mean, no one did it. I was the only
dude in the race with a rubberized goggle strap that
in a wind tunnel, I know, makes point oh six
percent difference, which was theoretically in a in a minute race,
which that was is a second. So and I and

(01:43:37):
I one hundred slower and I get no medal. So
you tie for second, you're one hundred slower, you just
got a bronze, no problem. You tie for third, one slower,
you get nothing. Bronze medal is important. And at that
point I was the oldest Olympic medalist in history globally.
Um it was. It was massive. And to know that

(01:43:58):
all other things excluded that goggle strap that I've done
for the first time in my whole life, uh made
the difference, got me a metal. Um was was interesting
and obviously, uh you know, I felt like, uh, you know,
it was it was a testament to my commitment and
the representation of my my commitment to getting better and

(01:44:19):
not leaving any stones unturned. Okay, And the comments that
you got in reaction to your play by play will
you do that again? Did that hurt? What was the
blowback from the people on the inside who hired you. No,
they loved it. I mean we got way more positive
feedback than negative. Um, because anyone who was a skier

(01:44:41):
appreciated it because it actually instructed them and formed them
of what was going on. They found that really educational
and interesting and much more than just a cheerleader. Um,
which was my intent. I mean, honestly, I feel like
one of the biggest failings of of this industry has
been education, has been informing people, you know, democratizing information
and UM. So that's where the way I approached it.

(01:45:03):
I after that Olympics, it was live prime time in
the US. I was a big one for me to
just know that I could do and be there and execute.
But afterwards I was like, I'll do it again, but
you're gonna pay me ten times as much and you're
gonna fly my family. I can't be away from my
family for three weeks. And in China, Korea, UM, And
I think they see it as talent is more or

(01:45:25):
less interchangeable, and in this case, um, you know, they
hired Lindsay, which I'm I love Lindsay so I'm looking
forward to seeing what she can do. And where are
all your globes and medals and trophies, uh, bunch or
in the Ski Museum in New Hampshire. Actually a buddy
zoom I was on a zoom call earlier. He was
there skiing at Cannon. He zoomed us um from in there.

(01:45:48):
But I don't know. A bunch of them are all
around different places. I don't. I don't think I have
any in my house here, so it's kind of like
a musician who keeps their grammy in the bathroom. In
any event, body, I so much for talking with me.
It's really been great. You've been able to answer questions
that I've never seen either asked or answered in all

(01:46:08):
of the ski media. So I really appreciate that. I
appreciate it. Great to talk to you. Okay, hopefully I
can see on the hill one day. And I'm one
of those people. I do have those five piers of
ski so I know what you're talking about. If you've
got one pier of skis, it would work. I'm all ears.
I'll get this already right out until next time. This
is Bob left Sex

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