Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Bode Miller

Transcript

Bode Miller · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is a special treat, truly legendary skier
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Bode Miller. Good to have here. How's it going? How
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: often do you ski these days? More or less every day?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So did you go out today? I didn't. Today was
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: one of my one of my bad bad days. Um,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I was on in front of this computer all day,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: which is my least favorite thing. Maybe, but um, yeah,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: it's usually it's been. I probably had fifty five days
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: this year, so it's it's a lot. I mean, it's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not it's not what it used to be. But yeah,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of skiing. Okay, do you still enjoy
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it as much? As much? As pretty subjective? But I
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: enjoy it a lot. I enjoy going with my kids
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and just parting around. I can ski with with anybody
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and have a good time. I think more or less
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I liked outside. I would be a really good golf caddy. Um.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I I golf a lot, and I could give two
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: ships about hitting the ball. I just like being outside
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and walking around. So I think as a caddy, i'd
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: carry the bag and kid give advice and um enjoy it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Probably three times more than I enjoy golf, but um, yeah,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I still you know, the other day we had a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: little powder and I and I ran a couple of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: steep shoots with a good young friend of mine who's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I've known since he was born, um since he's twenty
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: years younger than me, and my older sister's best friend's kid,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and it was there was a unique pleasure that I
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever really felt before seeing a
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: kid who I knew from when he was born and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I was a huge influence on his life being that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: We're from the same town and watching him, uh, you know,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: just kill these shoots at at Yellowstone and Big Sky,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and um, there's definitely a special pleasure of that, but
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I enjoy just all of it about skiing. Now, I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: certainly skied Big s guy. What shoots did you ski?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: In this case, we were actually we hiked were way
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: over on the Dakota side, so the side that faces
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: kind of the south, and and uh we we rode
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: up Dakota, we rode up um Shed Horn, and we
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: hiked up a little bit and then we traversed far
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: to the backside kind of the outskirts of what big sky,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: uh limits are, and we we ran a couple of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: shoots that kind of face towards I guess the East. Um,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they even have names over there.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know that anybody really gets to him because
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you have to go off the tram and ski down
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: that kind of back ridge and then drop into the
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Dakota Bowl. But that that wasn't the better stuff. Honestly.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: The better stuff was in y c Um just off
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of the shoulder there, and we we went over to
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: there's Pinnacle and Corner Pocket and they're just you know,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: they're short and easy, which is perfect for me because
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: my I'm not as fit as I once was, so
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: it's nice that I'm not doing four thousand continuous vertical,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: But um, it was. It was. It was awesome to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: watch somebody who had known since they were a kid
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: ski and a lot of ways better than I was. Now.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I've certainly skied a ton, not as much to you,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but at this point in time, unless it's a really
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: stormy day, which I enjoy, I find it much more
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: enjoyable if I'm with somebody. Is that also your experience?
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I like both, honestly, I think for me I'm not
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a I'm not a meditative person um in terms of
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: sitting still and being quiet, but skiing gives me that,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and it did when I was young, so I was
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: really kind of born into it. I you know, skied
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: at Cannon my formative years. Cannon On and I skied
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: every day. The mountain was open for three years, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: there you'd routinely on a on a minus fifteen or
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: minus twenty day blow and you'd have four or five
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: people on the whole mountain. So I was riding the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: chairlift and then the PbD chairs seventeen and it's um,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the Hong Kong share was twelve minutes. So
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I had these intermittent blocks between active action where I'm
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: you know, trying to ski of like totally serene silence
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and just looking at nature. And that was my aitation.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: So I think I I revert back to that really easily.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So for me, skiing alone is different, I think than
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. But like I said, that was
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a unique opportunity. The other day of skia, Shamus was
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: really I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I did because it was disproportionate to just a good
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: conversation on the chairlift. I really enjoyed the actual skiing
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and watching him ski now skiing in that cold weather.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I know, I still have toes at this very moment
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that they're tingling and I'm sitting inside. To what degree
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: if you've gotten frostbite, and to what degrees your body
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: banged up from being on the circuit. M uh, you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I'm actually not too banged up. My back is a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: bit so I wake up, you know, the stiff back
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: in the morning. I'm not sure how much of that's
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: my matches that you can see in the background here,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: or or just my you know, twenty five years of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: racing at a high level. But um, but you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I'm super thankful, remarkably lucky considering the crashes I took,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in the longevity of my career in a really high risk,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: low margin, high consequence sport. But in terms of frost
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: bite and stuff, I was I I was gifted with
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: ray nods. I don't know if you know ray nods.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about, kind of a circulatory anomaly,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: but done correctly and managed correctly. I think reynods is
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: actually a gift for those of us who are cold
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: weather athletes, because my hands get really stiff and white
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and uncoordinated really quickly. So like I can be in
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the pool in California and it's probably pools eighty degrees
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: or eighty five degrees, and my heels will get all white,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: my hands get all white, and I can't really a
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: dexterity goes away. But they don't get frostbite ever. I mean,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I've been in minus thirty five and I've had little
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: little bits of frost bit on my knuckles from you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: certain things, but in general, compared to the people around
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: me in Maine, when I was at boarding school or
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: at Cannon, or even on the World Cup in certain
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: instances with super tight boots and out there for you know,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: four or five hours at a time in minus thirty, um,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I was remarkably lucky. And I think that Ray nods
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: actually because the cat larry reflects where everything trunches down somehow,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: it actually prevents prospect to some degree. Wow, that's pretty interesting. Okay,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: that's my own philosophy. You can. I don't want to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: get too scientific on you. No, plenty, Scientifically that's what's great. Okay,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: you have a new education initiative can you tell us
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, I see l is in STU for
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: civic leadership. It comes really I'm I'm sort of the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: figurehead for it, although I've supported it for sixteen years now.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: They've been online for roughly twenty years. UM. The Spawn
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: family has been stewards of Dwight Academy or Dwight Schools
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: for um a hundred years, more than a hundred years,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and the Dwight Schools have been around for a hundred
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and fifty or so years, so a huge legacy and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: incredible quality of school and educational purpose and drive and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: also human development. Really, they they put kids in the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: top colleges around the world all the time. But more
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: than that, they're developing leaderships, pills and uh community UM
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: responsibility and accountability, all that stuff. So we intended to
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: do brick and mortar academies these last few years, and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: we were probably on the ten yard line um of that,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: and then COVID struck and it just kind of really
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: throw a wrench and things. So we we launched the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: online initiative just to give parents a better opportunity to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: give their kids a high level education during this time
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: where all these schools are even really fantastic schools are
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: really struggling to transition to online learning for these kids,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, I see all have been doing
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: it for twenty years, so they had a nineteen and
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a half year head start. So um it's been. It's
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: been incredible to engage these kids. We have fifty years
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: so students in the Winter Sports Academy, and um it's been. Yeah,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's part of my nature. My
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: grandparents started a tennis camp that was heavily into tennis instruction,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: but also character development and community and um, you know,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: all the all the good qualities that we all hope
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: we could you know, instill in our kids or and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: still in ourselves if we have the choice. Um so
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it's very natural to me. And uh it's been. That's
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: been one of the really cool things that's come out
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of this COVID debacle. Okay, what specifically is different about
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: this academy. Uh So, it's an inverted blended curriculum, which
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: means essentially each kid is obligated to somewhere between an
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: hour and an hour and a half of live online
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: classes per day. But during that time, this is the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: inverted part. The teacher actually just facilitates conversation between the kids.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: There is no teacher trying to tell you about your
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: homework or what you did or they just they let
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you apply that within your class to how you felt
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: about it, what it applies to in real life. They
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: facilitate that conversation the rest of your day. You you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: are held accountable to it, and you can self regulate
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: manage your time. So, but they're all online courses that
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: are essentially self instructed, So they have videos for kids
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: who are more visual learners, they have audio and visual
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: for reading and all that. It's basically demonstrations of what
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it is and applications in real life. And it's like
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you you can't go to your parents and say I
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: don't understand what I'm supposed to do. It literally spells
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: it out. You have all these different drills. If kids struggle,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: puts them into a different group and they learned that way.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So basically it allows kids to do about twice as
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: much work and feel like they're doing half as much.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And then and the only obligation they have, which is
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: an hour and a half all day, you know, is
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: spent conversing with their friends with facilitation of a teacher
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and they come out of it with a you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a degree that will get them into Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, Stanford, any of the big school So it's
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: for me. I mean, it's one of those things I
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: wish was around when I was there. And my element
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: of that is then I do webinars weekly. We have
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: webinar Wednesdays. I talked to the kids, give them, you know,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: contextual stuff about what I did my career, what I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: wished i'd had, how I deal with stress, how I
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: dealt with competition, um, you know, every every rething. And
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it's really just kind of a very family oriented kind
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of feel of just being a resource for them. Plus
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I give them training, um missions and and and affiliate
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: training programs and products that they could test out and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: try that that I would have loved to have when
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I was younger. I think would have really helped. And
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: um yeah, you know, my my role in this, because
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: we don't have a brick and mortar, is much less
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: where I'd be doing programming and kind of day to
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: day stuff. In this case, I'm just trying to layer
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: in as much help as I can to a really
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: kick ass let me be clear, is this only for
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: ski racers or is it for the general public. No,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: so i CEL has been around for twenty years, so
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: they've had students for twenty years doing this for dance,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: for acting, for who knows what. But um, the Winter
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Sports Actually Academy was this year and we have kids
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: who are snowboarders, Nordic alpine, um snowshoe who liked to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: go mountaineering, who just wanted to not do the crappy
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: public school program and are finding things to do with
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: themselves in the winter. And that's partly what we talked
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: about our webinars is just how do you do fun
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: stuff that you could explore and when use your youth?
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: You know, they all say you youth's wasted on the young.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to make it wasted less. Okay. You know,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell popularize the theory that ten thousand hours are
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: needed to become world class. It's been a lot of
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: documentation after that. But let's just assume you were presented
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: with a very young person under the age of five.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Do you think you could turn that person into a
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: competitive World Cup ski racer or do you believe there's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: inherent natural talent. Yeah, there's there's an airent natural talent
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: that will make it a lot easier. I think you
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: could turn them into a World Cup ski racer. Depending
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: on what country they're from. We happen to be gifted
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: with a lousy World Cup culture. So being from America,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: you could turn almost any race or get get taken
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: them in at five. You could turn almost any racer
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: into a World Cup or any person young person into
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: a World Cup racer. Would they wig races? I doubt it. Um,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it gets very nuanced and very difficult at the very
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: very top. We're talking about the best in the entire world.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: But you could definitely get them to race World Cup
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and place, say, you know, in the top thirty and
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: in several races for virtually any human uh that you found. Okay,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: let's go back to education. Needless to say, we have
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: a large education problem in the United States. There's the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: war between religious private public. Is there enough money keeople
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: keeping people interested? Teaching to the test as opposed to
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: learning to analysis? Uh the analyze two questions, is your
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: program scalable? And yes or no? Do you feel there's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: a way to solve the educational problem personally? In the
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, I'll start with the second. First is
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: is yeah, I think I think ours is fully scalable.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: This is I believe the solution is that the difference
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is we don't you need back end programming because this
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: allows for this remarkable amount of freedom and flexibility of schedule.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: You need programming to fit around that what the requirements are,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and that programming has to be done well. School kind
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of cheats that system where they basically lock your kid
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: up from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It's more of a glorified glorified babysitting system more than educational.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, the kids, if they're determined, can learn a
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: lot and can get something out of it. But in
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: my opinion, the more critical elements, as we all see
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: as you get to the top of an industry, is
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you know, perseverance, um, determination, self reliance, creativity. Things that
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: aren't necessarily taught in books, they're discovered through activities, are
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: through challenges and um I'm hoping that. Yeah, I mean,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: ours is fully scaled, but we could literally go. We
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: have master class teachers. They're all recorded, so because the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: way they're designed, you don't need more. I mean they
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: are what they are. We will refine the curriculum all
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the time, but it's ultimately scalable to the entire us
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and the cost is less than public school. So call
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: about eight thousand bucks right now for a public school kid.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Uh cost us about eight thousand bucks to do this
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: in the education is about four times better. So how
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: do you motivate someone who is hardheaded and not motivating? Yeah,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I mean everyone loves to do something. Um, you know
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know what they love to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: do yet, but they need exposure to lots of things
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: to discover what that is, especially young people. It's usually activity,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: interaction with other kids. And then we have a really
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: clever way of kind of parlaying that passion, that enthusiasm
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: for something that you wouldn't have to kick them three
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: times out the door to go get them to do
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: if it was their buddy out there playing basketball or
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: going skiing or whatever, they're chomping at the bit to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: go do that. You parlay that into the understanding of
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: how to sort of make things that suck not you know, fun,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: make things that suck exciting. And it's it's takes a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: little creativity and a little time. But given the flexibility
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of the schedule, it makes a ton easier because they're
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: not They're able to exhaust themselves doing things they love
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and then come in with a really as an attitude
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: in the place, really um sort of receptive to learning
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and and get an incredible amount done. Okay, prior to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: going to Maine Caribasset Academy, which is ski racing Academy,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: what was your educational experience? Lay at regional public school
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: and then a bit of profile high school, junior high
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and freshman year, and it was, Um, I would say
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: it was really easy for me. I wasn't uh, you know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: exceptional in terms of grades or anything. I was kind
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: of a middle of the road student, but I never
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: failed things. I just didn't really do a lot of work,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: didn't engage much, wasn't interested. Um, I like science. I
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: liked you know. I came from a family of doctors.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: My dad was in medical school, as too older brothers
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: or doctors, and his grandfather, his father, my grandfather was
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a doctor, um, a prominent East Coast doctor, so I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: kind of had like a I was exposed to lots
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of medical books and lots of my dad, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: still try. He speaks Latin. He as an incredible vocabulary.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: So I had good homeschooling teachers prior to public school,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: which I started in third grade, and then public school
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: was just kind of a waste of my time, I
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: felt like. So I was excited and willing to take
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the risk of going off to boarding school. But it
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: was definitely um. It was. It was nigo blow because
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I was going from a big fish in a small
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: pond to a small fish and a much bigger pond.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: But and the demands were much higher. But I knew
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that I was capable of dealing with it, and so
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I just kind of dove in. Okay, you're a legendary
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: independent thinker. Where did you get that from your parents?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: From your family? Yeah, I mean it's it's the great
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: mystery is how much is uh nature versus nurture? I
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: don't you know? Everyone in my family is stubborn. Right.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: We come from New Hampshire. It's a live, free or
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: die state, Like just our state motto should tell you something.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: But I also my dad was in third year medical school.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: He was in his his what do you call that is?
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Um Yeah, he's in the hospital actually diagnosing real patients
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and all that, and he walked from that, through it,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: through it away after coming from a family with a
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: very prominent father who's a you know, open heart surgeon
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and pioneering a lot of stuff in the East Coast,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: two older brothers who are doctors practicing, and he walked
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: away from that to go speak at Woodstock and uh,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: you know, and formed the political party, the Turtle Party,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: and you know a bunch of he was a hippie,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: you know. He So there's a defiant nature that comes
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: from my dad's side and my mom's side is probably
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: only amplified their true New Hampshire, Um, you know locals
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and and you know, screw anybody who tries to tell
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: me what to do. And so I definitely had it
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: from that side genetically and and culturally, like it's it's
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the nature of New Hampshire. You do what you want
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to do, and um, you stick to it, and you're
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: accountable and you don't blame other people. And so I
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: had that also through my upbringing of my you know,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: i'd leave that when I was four or five years old.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I go outside at eight thirty in the morning and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: i'd come back at four you know, and I don't
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: know how much the time my mom was tracking me around.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I doubt she was, but um comforting to think she was,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: because I've got myself in a some sketchy situations and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: was touch and go for a lot of times. But um,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: that kind of independence, you know, teaches you a lot
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: about um risk management and self reliance and and being
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: accountable to your actions and that, you know, so I was.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It's it's a mystery to me, but certainly I had
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: it from every angle, uh to to develop into a
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: very defiant, independent, self reliant, uh self motivated person. Okay,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: before you go to care Bassett, what kind of kid
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: are you? Are you the loner, a member of the group,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: a leader, an outcast? What were you like? Uh? I
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was probably a general? Um I was. I didn't like
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the spotlight, so I didn't like being the guy. And
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: there was always the guy. There was like some kid
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: who was better looking or it was funny or had
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: like you know, all the jokes or whatever. But I
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: was super dominant in athletics. So on the soccer field baseball,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I've never played, and I got to be the best
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: kid on the team really quick. That was really good
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: at I wasn't naturally that gifted. I was just exposed
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: to a ton of sports as a home schooled kid,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: with a tennis camp all summer and skiing all winter,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and snowboarding and sledding and standing up on those old
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: snurfboards and climbing around in the rivers and running up
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and down the rivers and rock climbing of Mountcols. So
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I had this massive if you want to talk about gladwell,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I had this massive volume of hugely dynamic sports activity, coordination,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: mental discipline, all these things at a really young age.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So it allowed me to adjust and tweak to any
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: situation I was in and be successful. So, um, you know,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I had I had good friends. I was not a bully,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I was I was a connector. I was friends with
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the older kids because they played sports at a higher
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: level and I like that. I was friends with a
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: skater guys. I smoked a bunch of weed because I
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: like skateboarding and you know, and they were fun. I
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: was friends with guys who were forty five years old
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: because they skied on cold days. They were the ski bums.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And I played soccer with my uncle's who were a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: generation before me, and so I really had. Like in
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, you don't have the option to pick one friend.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Ye for me, I, like so many things, I was
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: required to make friends with everybody. So I had a
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: very diverse group of friends and I was kind of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: jumping around and most of them couldn't understand how does
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: he like come skateboard with us and then go rock
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: climbing with his uncle or go play a soccer game
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that afternoon. And that's just the way I lived. Okay,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: you talk about home schooling, but from K through the
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: first and second year of high school you were in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: traditional school, right, No. I started public school in third
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: grade in like, yeah, the middle of third grade thing,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: how do you decide to go to Cara bassett Um.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The year before, I had gotten um sort of violated
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: in a way, uh politically by a coach in Franconia.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: He'd he'd called up a race after and said that
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I admitted to him that I hooked a tip and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I should be disqualified. I had never done that. He
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: was upset with me because we had a little bit
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of a throwdown in front of some of the other
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: kids and a couple of parents where he was saying
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that I couldn't train because I was too bad, and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I should do the drills he wanted me to do,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and I said, I don't care about your drills. I
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: just want to run some gates because I have j
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: O qualifiers tomorrow. And so he was pretty bad heard
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: about that argument and and felt like he wanted to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: get me back. He called this race how a race
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: thrown out? And uh, I didn't make the Junior Olympics
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that year as a twelve year old, and uh, my
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: town and and kind of everybody ran him out of
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: town on a on a you know, tard and feathered,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: but it didn't change the fact that it was out
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of the jail is that previous year. And they said, look,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're serious about this, we'll figure out
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a way, um to get you into care about that.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: My mom was good, was best friends when she was
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: fifteen with the headmaster's wife, so that was kind of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: an in. And then I had to you know, I
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: lived with a day student twenty miles away from school,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: off in the woods with no no access by car. Um.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: That was my first year at c v A, and
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I only went for the winter term. So I went
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: November and came back, and I guess March um and uh,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and I had to work all summer to pay it off.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So I paid paid my own way with help from
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: some of the locals in my town. But it was, yeah,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it was it was scratching at that point. What did
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: your father do for a living having dropped out of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: medical school, professional hippie? He? Uh. He and my mom
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: were together till I was six, and then they separated
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and he went down to Tennessee primarily because he was
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: unhappy and I think had had had had had several
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you know, early seventies, mid seventies affairs, but also um,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: he had missed out on He he invented foot spars,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: which were these date fig maple syrup, a bunch of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: different nuts in this tiny little rapper bar. And this
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is in nineteen seventy nine probably, and uh that's pre
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: power bar, pre everything else. He if you went back
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: through his his life from just before I was born,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: he he invented six or seven things that turned into
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: billion dollar industries. And he was way ahead of the curve.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: But his lack of ability to see things through or
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: or do the steps that maybe weren't as fun for him. Uh,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: prevented him from ever monetizing anything. So then he when
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: he separated from my mom, which I think, as I said,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: was not to go make money, but that was part
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of the excuse. He went down to Tennessee and was
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: a tree route, so he would climb up in huge
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: trees along these big mansion uh driveways and outside of Nashville,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: and he he'd clean up the trees and make sure
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: branches were going to break people's houses and cars. And
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: UM he did that for I think five or six
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: years down there, and then uh ended up moving back up.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Now he's he worked. Phrase he was a homeless outreach
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: worker for fifteen years in New England. UM, he still
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: maintains his very hippie hippie approach. He's never really made
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: made any money. Okay, if you're at Cara Bassett, you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: get out from under the bad coach. You're there, Hey,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: do you fit in these the coaching beneficial? UM? I
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: would say fit in fine because I love sports and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I was a hard worker. UM coaching was still problematic
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: because I was bad. Uh you know that the end
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of that first year, UM, I didn't really have any
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: good results to speak of. Uh. Certain coaches could see
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that I had a lot of ross speed and I
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: was naturally very athletic um. But they they sat me
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: down after the first year, and again keep in mind,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I was I was getting up at four thirty in
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the morning, doing chores, getting on a snowbile, snowbiling six
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: miles along these crazy main trails into Kingfield, hitching a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: ride with some worker or employee up to carabast, getting
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: there in time for morning meeting, going through classes, going
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: to hill training classes, come back down, get in a
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: car eighteen miles back down to the Kingfield, back on
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a snowobile six miles through the woods, chores, homework, dinner,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: bed and doing that over and over again. And I
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: was with another student who was two years older than me,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: but then he would go off on fist racing trips
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: for a week and a half two weeks, so I'd
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: be on my own. So I was, you know, fourteen
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: years old, driving my own snowobile through six miles from
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the woods like rickety ass. And at the end of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that year I had they had like an intervention. They
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: sat down with the Dina students, UM all the coaches
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and they said, look, you're lazy and you. You suck
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: at skiing, You're never gonna be any good. Um, we
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: don't like your attitude. You don't, you don't really you know,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: show a lot of like initiative enthusiasm. If you switch
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to snowboarding, we'll give you a full ride back to school,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: you'll live in the dorm next year, won't pay anything
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: all set. Um. I was good at snowboarding. I'd grown
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: up snowboarding and we had an all school snowboard races.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: What inspired this is I was like second or third
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and one of the runs and the that we had
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the best snowboards in the country at that time, and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: they went around the circle and basically all just just
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: pop my balloon, like talk about p in the serial.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: It was. It was brutal, and I was happy not
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: to have broken down and cried right there, because it
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: was pretty brutal because I I was doing double what
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: any other student in the school was doing, minus the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: dude who was my my sort of I guess housemate,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: but he was even doing less than I wasn't he's
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a couple of years older, so um. But I reflected
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: on that thought about a bunch and then told him
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the pounds and and that if they needed to charge
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: me more to come back to school, i'd I'd figure
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: out a way to pay it. And I wanted to
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: be a ski racer and snowboarding was not what I
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: wanted to do, so um yeah, I fit in, but
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: I was still definitely defiant and definitely was not fitting
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: into the system the way they wanted to. And I said, look,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: you guys, I suck now. I'll give you that. You're
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: not wrong, but I'm gonna be better when I'm fifteen,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be better when i'm eighteen, and when
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: i'm twenty you'll start to see how good I can be.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: That's what it's gonna take. And I apologize if that's
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: too long a timeline for you guys, but you know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I've known this for ten years at that point, since
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I was six or seven when I talked to my
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: grandmother about it a bunch and I said, look, it's
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: not important how good I am when I'm fifty and
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of prize money there, and if
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: you win races, you know, it's it's a different deal.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I need to be good when I'm when I'm old
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: enough to be successful in the world stage. Okay, ultimately
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: you were, but you know, you have a unique style,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and certainly I grew up in the area. Was your
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: in the are of first your skis were together, then
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: racers were a part and they had changed in equipment.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Was the coaching ever helpful or really you were coaching
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: yourself and you had the benefit of them setting the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: gates up and logistics. I would say both. I mean,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I think the coaching was very rarely helpful in the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: immediate term. I think the coaching was really helpful long term,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: over over one or two year span where I listened
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: to everything and I retain information really well, and mostly
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: what I was doing. The way that I developed, in
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the way that I learned things was by watching other people.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I would watch somebody who I liked a certain thing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: They could be worse than I did than I was
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: at that time, but I liked specifically the way they
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: moved into a turn. And I had a very good
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: understanding of of sort of the biomechanics of skiing and
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: how did underrate speed. And that's one thing that I
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: wasn't willing to give up, and that was always a
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: pushback from the coaches. They wanted me to do manually
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: adjust certain things, and I said, I can't do those
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: things because it'll cost me these things that I need
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: to keep alive because if I if I kill him,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'll have arrest resurrect them later. And
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: those are the most important things. So UM, the coaching,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I would say in hindsight, was a lot of it
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: was UM was emotional arousal control and races patients. I
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: learned a lot of that stuff from those coaches, and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I had some amazing coaches up at t v A.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: From a technical standpoint, I don't think I learned that much. Okay,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: speaking of technical standpoint, you had a breakthrough. You were
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: in the U S Nationals I believe it was, and
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: used the K two for which was a shaped recreational ski.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: How did you decide to do that? I've been a snowboarder, um,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: as I said. They tried to get me a switch
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of snowboarding in ninth grade. This is all the way
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: into my senior year, and I've been working on rage
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: tore me who was a K two rep uh and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the East Coast too. Raised with my uncle, so I had,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of a little extra credibility with him
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and he's a great dude. And uh, I'd cut a snowboard,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: alpine snowboard in half and mounted mounted ski bindings on
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: it and flipped the edges so that I had one
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: side cut edge and then one raw band sad edge.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: If you touch that to the snow, you crashed immediately.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: And I was arcing turns and I had George watched me,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: and I said, George, we need to build a shape ski.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I was always trying to innovate. It was during that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: time we had Derby flex and higher lifters, and the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: one thing that was missing was more side cut. And
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you could clearly see that snowboarders could turns all day
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: that it would have been happening for years, and we
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: just hadn't done in skiing. So George said, hey, we
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: tried that in the seventies. It didn't work. I was like, well,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you tried it wrong, let's try it again. And um,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I had worked on him for two years. Finally he
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: got them to build a semblance of of what I'd
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: asked for. And I did everything from exact construction. I
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: wanted a cap construction to give torsional stiffness, and I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: was in mechanical drawing and all that stuff. So I
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: was doing at a on board and I was drawing
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: everything out and um, finally he built them, and uh,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the day that I got them, it changed really changed
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the sport. Um Alan had been developing their shape ski
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: during that same phase, but no one had skied on
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it yet, and races, no one had really experimented with it.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: So the K two four was the first ski that
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I had really developed um and forced through and I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: raced on it in the Junior Olympics and I won
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the Super G by two point you know, seven seconds,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: and I was more than five seconds ahead before I crashed.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I went on my hip a couple of times on
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the bottom and lost a ton of time, but still
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: ended up winning by almost three seconds, and then won
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the Giant Sloan by over two seconds as well with
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: several crashes, and the Giant Slam as well. So that
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: really shocked people and opened the eyes and put the
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the magnifying glass on K two. And then
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the next year, everybody, I didn't use those skis in
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the nationals. That's that's a common mistake. I was only
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: in the nationals for Giant slom and and slom and
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: I crashed in the gs and blew out. And then
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and the slalom, I used the traditional ski. My my
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: slalom ski was the same length as my K two four,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: so I was using the same length and slalom and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: gs and uh and I'm pulled off a really magical
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: um run from way back in the pack and finished
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: third to objectively qualified for the team. If I hadn't
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: objectively qualified, there was zero chance they were taking me
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: on the team. Okay, so you are partially responsible for
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the development of the K four K two four. Yeah, yeah,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: And I think I mean not to split hairs. But
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't even say partially. I would say, uh, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: nineties seven percent. They fought me on it for two years.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I've been pushing it. I gave George the snowboard. I
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: showed him the side cut, I showed him everything. I
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: cut the snowboard even thinner, and that screwed it up.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: And I said, this is what you did in the
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: seventies when you tried shape skis. You didn't have the torsion.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: If I left the snowboard as half, I had a
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: raw edge of wood that i'd bands on, and then
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: a side cut finished edge. I could arc turns on
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that if I cut off another half of that to
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: make it the width of a normal race ski. Its
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: skied like ship because it was too torsionately weak. It
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: would twist too much, and that's what they had messed up.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: So I said, you know, I really worked hard on
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: him for two years, and I will say, of all
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: my qualities, my persistence and stubbornness are are two of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: my elite level of qualities. And I just wore them down, honestly.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: And he finally went in there and said, look, dude,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: we gotta build these skis. And they didn't even really
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: tell him. He said, it's a Rex ski. It'll be awesome.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: We'll try it. They built him and they sold out
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: across the country in a week and a half. Okay,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: let's talk about equipment. You were with numerous companies. You
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: started with Fisher, you went to ros and y'all. You
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: were Thetomic, you went to Head. Is there really any difference.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Let's just start with the skis themselves opposed to the boots.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Is there really any difference or you can get in
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: and make the ski work for you. No, it's a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: massive difference, massive difference. I mean the engineers are are
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: different philosophically, the equipment, the layoup process side cuts there.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: There's a huge prints also that they became systems pretty early,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: where a boot, binding plate, ski all work together, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: if you didn't have that right you could really screwed up.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: But keep in mind before that, I skied on UM
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: K two Olwen Rosignal previous to World Cup racing. This
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: is through my sort of high school years. UM. I
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: skied on uh Nasal, I skied on Atomic twice, really
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: two different versions there. UM, and I gravitated towards K
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: two because of the relationship with George, and I was
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: able to get better skis and then UM. But yeah,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the difference from KTU to Fisher was was night and day.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I mean it was a huge I would have had
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: a really, really really hard time trying to win a
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: World Cup race that I stayed on K two my
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: entire career, UM, regardless of my own engineering prowess or
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: anything else. Fisher I had the ability to win races
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: that year. Um, then Rosignal I had the ability to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: win races and start moving into speed effectively, so into
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: super ge downhill, and then UM from from Rozzie. Is
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: when I kind of I wouldn't say sold out, but
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: switched to Atomic where I knew I was do. I
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: was physically finally mature and strong enough, and um, I
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: knew I could be a world beater. So I switched
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to Atomic and that's when I won, you know, the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Wired to wire overall World Cup and all the events
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: in seventeen days, you know. Um. And then and then
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: after that was more of I wanted to develop skis
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and fell in with Head and stayed with them for
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: three years. Okay, let's start with Fisher. Okay, I agree,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: totally ski ski totally different. I happen to like the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: French skis. I like something a little bit more alive.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: But at World Cup level you're not skiing on retail skis.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So when we talk about Fisher, would you tell them
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: how to make the skis or they just had a
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: bunch of skis? You tested them and you skied what
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: you liked. No. By that point I had a very
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: clear idea. That was a big part of it is
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: K two was actually pulling away from World Cup, and
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it was almost mandatory. I switched. And when I went
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: to several companies which I was in demand. I could
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: have switched to several UM. I told Fisher, will you
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: build me this exact slom ski? This is the ski
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: it needs to be, this, this fiberglass, this top sheet,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: this side cut, this would core this many laminates across.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Will you build me this? And they said, yeah, it's
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: not gonna work, but we'll build it for you. And
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I said, okay, build it for me. And UM that
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: was that was a dealmaker because the other companies were
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: at that time this is you know, in two thousand,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: UM I was. I didn't have the credibility and the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: industry wasn't prepared to take that type of input from
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the athletes. They would take, as you said, they'd give
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: them five pairs, which do you like best? And then
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: they would go back and try to figure out which
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: materials to change to make the new ones better and
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: all that. So, UM, that was the very beginning of that.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: And I wanted a company that was going to do
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: exactly what I said, and Fisher offered to do that, UM,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and so I went. And actually that was the beginning
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: of a massive revolution in the sport where within two
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: years every company had their athletes in the actual ski
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: room showing them fiberglass, showing them metals, and trying to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: figure out because there was a huge gap between what
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you felt on the hill and what the engineer decided
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: was going to impact that feeling. There. There's there's thirty
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: ways to skin a cat in that case, and they
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: just had too big a gap. So we closed that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: gap right up, okay, slowly. How and why did you
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: decide to switch to Rozzie. I decided because of one
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: particular gs ski, so I'd want a couple of slams
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: on Fisher. I had won a couple of gs is.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Um the ski was already going down the path that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: we ended up on then now, which is a very
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: tiptail ski, so you could feel the very very tip
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: of the ski engaged in the snow, and if it
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: hit a bump, it would deflect and you'd lose radios,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: so it would flap down and it would just and
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I skied on Nordica, I skied on Razzie, I skied
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on Dinas Star And the rosignal skis that they had
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: for me at that time was a complete anomaly in
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the irony, As this has happened to me several times.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: They built five pairs. So it's a prototype run of
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: a ski and they said, have body test these keys. Um,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: they couldn't get the I don't know if you remember Rozzie.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: At that time, they had a V A S plate.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: It's this little metal plate that's stuck on the top
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: of the ski. They couldn't get that plate to stick
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: to the aluminum which is right under the top sheet,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: and then the felt it was metal on metal and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: it would just fly off. And so they actually on
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that particular batch, they said, well, ship will just cut
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: a hole in the aluminium, will will stick that thing
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: through that hole to the aluminium, will glue it onto
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the wood below, and it worked perfect. So stayed on.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I got all five of those pairs of skis. I
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: broke one immediately actually in the testing program. But because
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: they cut that hole in the top layer of aluminum,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: they created a bit of a hinge point in the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: ski right there, and you had this unbelievable grip point
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: just in front of the binding. So if you slid
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: into a turn in chundery, you know, icy conditions, you
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: had this grip point right in front of the binding
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: that you could always rely on. And the tip wasn't
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: even the part grabbing you pulled radius that was disproportionate
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: to your side cut because the tip was actually not
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: doing it. It was just folding in this tiny little
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: space right in front of the binding and you just
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: it was like a hockey skate. And I I didn't
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: know at the time that that was the only five
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: pairs in existence. UH three M who was their glue
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: provider at that time, gave them glue that worked. They
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: built every ski from that point forward without cutting a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: hole in the aluminum because now the metal stuck to
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the metal and stayed on there perfectly. And we spent
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: two years trying to figure out why my race skis
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: were the best skis ever built, and every other pair
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: they built was garbage compared to it. So um that
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: one ski was the reason. It was everything I've been
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: looking for. And I went one the g S title
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: against one of the strongest giants long and fields that
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that's been around, um you know, Herman Benny Reich, uh
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Shaun Felder, Pollander, uh d d A Couch Um Niberg
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: eber Harder. It was like the powerhouse of g skiing
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: at that time. For me to win was something that
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been able to do with any other
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: ski company at that time. Okay, now from a retail level,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Rozzie's in Atomic Sky radically differently. Did you experience that,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You say you went for the money, but that's a
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: big switch. No, I didn't. I mean you mean when
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I supposed to Atomic. No. That was one of the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: great regrets in my career looking back, was that I
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: went to Atomic. They paid me half as much as
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Rossie did, and a quarter as much as Nordica was
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: offering me at that time. A quarter. I would have
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: had the biggest contract there's ever been in ski racing
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: by going to Nordica. But Um in Nordica had almad
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: at that time he was just kind of phasing out.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I would have had an amazing quiver of skis. They
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: were good in four events. I could have stayed on
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Nordica boots Um. There was a lot there that that really,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: in hindsight, I would love to know would have happened
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: had I made that switch. But the Atomics I was
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: on at that time with the Beta, so that was
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that that little arch top they had two aluminum tubes
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: in there. That Beta did the same thing that Rozzie
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: cutting the hole in their ski did, but a different way.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It created a torsional imbalance between those two tubes that
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: were longitudinally very stiff. The ski was was really stiff,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: but tortially all the way up until the binding. The
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: ski actually rotated this way because there were two separate
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: tubes that moved independently, and that that was a remarkable
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: g ski. Um. It was the second best GSK I'd
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: ever been on. And I wanted Atomic because of super
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: G downhill. I was willing to suck in slam and
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and figure it out, but I wanted super G downhill
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: because what I was on on Rosenal was not allowed
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: me to move into downhill SUPERG. But I wasn't competitive
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and you know again I can't second guess myself. And
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that I got on Atomic built my first pair of
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: boots was down in Cheon in Chile, south of Santiago Go.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: And I didn't lose a run of supergier downhill skiing
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: against the entire French team Darren, my own team, who
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: was who was strong at that time, UM for for
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: a month and a half and I didn't I didn't
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: lose a single run. I mean, so it was kind
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: of a I wish I knew what would happen if
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I had made a different choice, But it was a
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: very strong switch. Okay, when you were there, certainly the Austrians,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: an Austrian company, Herman Meyer, et cetera. You're kind of
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: further down the totem pole. Does that affect what equipment
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: you get in, what attention you get? Yeah, that was
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a big part of the oh six Olympic debacle. Um
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I built a supergee ski. There was also a downhill
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: ski UM in in say September, and UH and they
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: politically there was shenanigans there. They the Austrian team, which
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: basically controls the Austrian factory, UH, took those skis test them.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: They couldn't figure them out, which is I wasn't trying
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: to do intentionally, but there was a very specific way
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: those skis need to be too and and mounted to
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: work right, and they couldn't figure it out. So they
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: kept trying and kept trying them. No guy could make
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: them work. They were super fast on the flats, but
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: they couldn't figure out to make them turn. And they
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: held those all the way until two days before the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Olympic downhill UM and then they gave him to me
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: and Darren because they knew that I wouldn't be able
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to resist trying them and they felt like that would
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: be a distraction. Darren and I were the two strongest
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: downhillers really in the world at that point, and uh,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: and they wanted every advantage they could get, and that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: political Shenanigan's upset both of us. We ended up racing
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: on the same pair of skis Darren and I. I
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: skied first, I was starting before him. They ran the
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: skis up the chairlift. He they re finished them at
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the start and he ran the same skis and unfortunately,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: lack of experience on them and all that we we
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: didn't have success in the downhill. I won the combined
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: downhill against the same field a day later by a second. Um. So,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they were successful in in thwarding
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: our our stuff. But uh, that was a piece of
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: why I was so petulant and upset during that oh
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: six Olympics, because my team didn't go to bat for me,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and I was just, uh, yeah, I was taking advantage
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: of it away. How long does a pear of race
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: skis last depends on how good year keeping them safe.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: My my Rozzie's ice skied on the same pair of
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: race skis the entire first year and say six of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: eight races the second year one and would but I wouldn't.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't. I wouldn't train on them. I wouldn't
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: bring them out for anything. I wouldn't even bring my
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: training skis out to train on. I would train on
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: other skis that I specifically tuned in a way to
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: make them more similar to my race skis, even though
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I was nowhere near time wise. And we had a
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: little funny thing at Solden where we'd we'd do the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Austrian time trial before the first World Cup of the
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: year was was sold in the US had a sort
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: of relationship with Austria. We trained with them, and we'd
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: be training on it right before the time trial, and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: my coaches like, dude, you're sucking, Like what's going on.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I'd like, don't worry about I'll be fine, and I'd
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: go out and bring out just my training skis for
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the time trial. And I won that time trial. I
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: won both runs three years in a row, against all
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the Austrians and all of our team, And then I
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: would put those skis away and I'd go back to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: getting beat by guys on my own team, and then
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I'd pull out the race skis for a race day
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and and win races on them. But it's just you
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: have to know how to manage them, and you've gotta
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: be really careful with what you do. Even hitting hard ice,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: you can't you can't jam certain ways on it. You
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: certainly can't hit rocks or anything else. Okay. In the
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: switch to head you were really the first big name
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: to go to head. Yeah. Johan Eliosh, who's the owner
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: of head Um, you know, and I got to know
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: each other a bit and he said, look, you know,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: my goal is to be the number one ski company
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: in the world. And I was like, all right, let's
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: do it. I was like, if I'm gonna join you,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: you gotta I said. I don't want to get a
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: bunch of push back. I said, you know me, Uh,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: if you're bringing me on for this, I can. I
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: can get you there. You will be in the number
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: one ski company. When I tell you to buy this athlete,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: you don't bicker about it. You just buy that athlete.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: When I tell you about build new skis in this category,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: build new skis like it's gonna cost you some money,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: but will get to number one. He said, I'm not
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: concerned about the money. Let's do it. And um, that
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: was an exciting fun, uh new project for me because
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I was building skis not just for myself. I was
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: building skis for the women's team. I was building skis
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: for men's who skied very differently than I did in
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: some cases, were much more talented in certain areas than
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I was. And that was that was fun. I enjoyed
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that a lot. Okay, but you're essentially going, it's a
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: blank slate. Did you really just tell them how to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: build the skis? They had did remarkable engineers. Um, you know,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Head was maybe the strongest in the entire world in
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: terms of their raw engineering power. What they didn't have
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: was what all these other ski companies that really capitalized
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in the six years previous to that was really good
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: communication with top level athletes who are raising World Cup
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: all the time. They just didn't have the athletes, and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: they didn't have a rapport or vocabulary to communicate even
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: with the athletes they did have, which were lower level. Um.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: So yeah, when I came on, I basically communicated with
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: those engineer it was. It was a great It was
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: a great time because they understood everything I said. Nothing
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: was shocking. They had already done a bunch of great
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: things over the past years that I actually reinvigorated and said, no,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I think you were really close. This was an awesome idea.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: You guys are way ahead of the curve. You just
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: have to tweak these things because here's how this feels
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: on the snow, and here's what you're missing. And they
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: could do it, you know, overnight, and then I'd moved things.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: So we moved forward very quickly. Within that first year
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: when I switched um that was six or seven season.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: We had the best speed skis on the planet that
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: first year because we reinvigorated the traction system with that cut.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: They put this cut through the top layer and top
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: layer of aluminum and they bridge that with a piece
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: of aluminium underneath it. But it does that same thing.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: It creates an inflection point in the ski and they
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: just hadn't quite got that right. And we got that right,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and the skew was unbelievable. What about the famous two
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: edge skis to I mean, like the one was on
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: top of another, that those work was that you know,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: just get a lot of press. I think it just
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: got a lot of press. I mean it was you know,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: there's metal slow period, like the thinner edges the better, UM.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: But there's certain elements of that that I think are
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: gonna be relevant in the future. UM, particularly for big
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: mountain really steep stuff, having an edge that skis normally,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: but having a secondary edge that comes out of your
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: side wall. That's essentially for fifties six degree pitches that
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: what you have a grip point that's really only right
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: underneath your foot where you don't feel the tip or
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: the tail. You're you're just like a hockey skate right
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: under your foot. And that can be UM, really really
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: important for safety when you're up on a you know,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: face that you're suspended over eight hundred foot cliff and
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you you know, your tip HiT's a wind drift and
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: your backwards and UM, I think there's a lot to that.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I think there's been some unbelievably smart creative engineers in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the sport over the last four or five decades. And
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: unfortunately it's it's a system. So it's kind of like
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: a house of cards. If you did everything right, but
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: one thing was wrong and the whole thing didn't work.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: So in this case, a lot of it is revisiting
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: really old clever ideas and figuring out how to um,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: you know, tweak them a little bit and see if
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: there's if there's value there. Okay, what about boots? What
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: was your revolution in boots? You certainly switched a number
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of times. Yeah, and and boots roy is a frustration
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: point for me. I wish that, um, i'd had a
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: wealthy benefactor who would allowed me to build my own
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: boots UM because I felt like it's such a crazy
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: concept that we build this more or less chunk of
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: plastic that just bends and flexes and somehow it works.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: And it does work, I won't deny that, but it
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't work as well as it should um. To me,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: boots are much more of an engineering piece than any
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: other part of the system. Right is you should have
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: a boot that's controlled by either gas shocks, oil shocks, elastomers.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Something there shouldn't be just plastic. The bending and bubbling
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: where you know, in the whole front of the boot
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: where all the flexing and movement happens, is constantly being
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: open and closed to get your foot in it out
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: of it and like, if you buckle the buckles lightly tighter,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: you get a totally different performance, you know, curved than
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: you would with a looser It's just to me that
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: was insane. So when I was on Nordica, I had
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: some breakthroughs in terms of basic understanding of what different
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: things could do to a boot, and that was my
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: favorite boot. Um. When I was on Atomic I I
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: did the same things and was able to create a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: really good four event boot. I see the exact same
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: boot and slomgs supertoo downhill in one uh you know,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: seven races in in fourteen days or seventeen days or something.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: So um and on the same boot, and that that
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: was the sort of extent beyond that, I think boots
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: for garbage. So right now I see on a full tilt,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: which is an old rightly um from the eighties, right
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: it literally is the mold from the eighties, and um
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that that boot was the best boot on the world then,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: and the only knock against it was it didn't turn
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: skis that well, and that was because the skis had
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: no side cut didn't turn very well. So now I
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: think that's by far the best boot on the planet.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: So that's why I use. But I am trying to
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: push somebody to evolve the boot process because I think
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: there's a huge, huge capability for improvement there. Okay, specifically,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: what makes the full tilt boot better flexes straightforward, so
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you you flex linear u versus flexing out. So if
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: you were to bolt your typical ski boots to the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: ground with a base down to flex forward, your knees
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: have to travel out, usually ten degrees, thirteen degrees whatever,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: but they travel out, so if you're forward on the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: front of your boot, you're actually increasing the edge angle.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: And then when you with your knee moving in a
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: linear motion straight backwards, the edge decreases an angle. Even
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: though you're not decreasing your edge angle with your knees,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the skis decreasing because you're coming back to a neutral spot.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: That to me, is a terrible design. It worked well
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: when the skis had no sidecut because as you drove
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: forward you could the ski would tip way up and
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: it would cause the front to kind of turn when
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: no sidecut, But now it just creates an overly aggressive
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: ski that causes all kinds of problems and knee injuries
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: and stuff. So that's one piece of it. They have
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the interchangeability. I can switch my tongue out and go
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: from a six flex tongue to attend to a fourteen,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and I have this your thing tongue that they made me. Um,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: they would be like the equivalent of like like a
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen or eighteen. But um, you can change
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the back the cuff the same thing. You can just
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: pop it off and put on a different one, and
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: um dramatically change the characteristics of the boots. So and
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: you slide it on like a slipper and no snow
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: gets in there. It's just it's just better. Okay, you
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: famously tweaked your boots on the door remains you were
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: added forward lean, So when it comes to forward lean
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and ramp aangle, what were your thoughts. It's all it's
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: a system. It only matters about the system. If you're
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: skiing a ski that you can trust the front half
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: of the ski, and you needed certain things, you could
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: ramp up, But generally I was going the other way.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: If I ramped up in the boot, I would de
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: ramp on the ski, So I would put lifters under
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the toe piece of the binding. So even though I
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: had more ankle flexion, in the boot. That was just
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: to get the boot to line up correctly so that
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I could so I could drive down with my knee
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: instead of tipping forward with my knee. So I always
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: like to drive down into the ski with my knee
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: versus so I needed ankle flection. If the boot was
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: too open, too upright, the angle was too open, then
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you you were stuck. So I would always get that
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: to a place I liked, and then I would bring
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the toe up to get me balanced on the ski. Definitely.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: One of the common mistakes is too much ramp angle
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: and too much forward lean and too much delta between
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the front and back of the bindings. Typical bindings are
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: you know, five millimeters lower in the front and the
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: back um, and that's when you compound that by ramp
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: angle inside the boot where the front is you know,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes thirteen fourteen millimeters difference between the height of the
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: heel and the height of the toe. It's just this
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: whole big ramp and it makes it impossible for people
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to ski forward because they're so tipped forward that if
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: they actually pushed forward, they would just fall over the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: front of the skis. So um, I did everything, but
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: I would say, I ended up in a really good
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: place with fairly neutral to upright boots um with good
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: ankle flection, and I was moving my foot around inside
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the boot quite a bit getting the right ankle position
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: versus where the boot actually liked to bend um. But
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: basically a flat ramp angle on the ski. Okay, that's
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: been a big evolution. If you go to laying, which
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: has been around since the fifties, hit it, say in
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the sixties with the old skis, the Stratos, the DTA
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: meet VR seventies, they had a lot of ramp angle.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Now they're really flat. Okay, So on some level you're
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: saying that's followed you. How does that affect how you
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: ski on shape skis In the old days, when it
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: was so much harder to have a car of turn
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you had to get the weight forward, do you feel
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: that that's less of an issue and it's more about
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: being centered now? Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: going dead straight in a straight line on a shape
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: ski and you don't have to push forward at all,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: you just tip over. That tip initiates so quickly with
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: that sidecut and pulls in so quickly that automatically your
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: inertia is going forward, and now the skis trying to
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: turn that way you are forward. You can't avoid being
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: for it. It's actually hard to not be for it
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: on a a dramatic side cut ski. Um, you're exactly right.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: They were designed around and so is an orderkle grhand
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Prix was designed around skis with no side cut. They
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: were much longer where you really had to you had
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: to twist and snap that front to get it to
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: do anything, and now you don't. Yeah, the ski does
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: all that for you automatically, and so a more upright
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: boot with much less ramp angle makes you more efficient.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: You your skeletally, you're more lined up, You're able to
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: support more force and absorb more. Um. The challenges with kneflection.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: You don't have a lot of suspension in the ski
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: system right from the bottom of the ski to the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: all the way up. Your shin can't move that much,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: so a lot of your suspension is from your knee
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: of your hip, and that's a really slow moving, long
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: travel suspender. Um. So I tend to still like some
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: ankle flection for absorption purposes, but again that's where the
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: full tilt is so much better than other boots is
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: that you you can't fold it over the top. You know,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: I broke my ankle inside my boot twice because I
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: would hyper flex the boot and it would just pull
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: my ankle apart and snap off the bottom of my tibia.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And it's you can't do that in the full tail
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: because the instep is actually if your ankle joint is
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: here a normal boot, the instep might be there. In
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the full tailed in step is like two inches away
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: from the front ear, so you it doesn't cause any lever.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: You can't be pulled up out of the boot. You'll
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: just crunch against it, and it actually drives your heel
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: down and back no matter what you're doing. So it's
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: you know, for me, it's safer to okay. Now you
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: skied at the literally top level of the elite level.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: And before you made it to the top, were you
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: ever intimidated by the competition? Now you had a long
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: history of competition. I was not a good ski racer,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: but I ski with the World Cup freestyle people in
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: the moguls all the time, could ski better than them.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: But once you're in competition, it's like this guy Scott
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Brooks Mack he got better in competition. Okay, so what
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: was it like for you competing? Yeah, it was, there was, Um,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: there was certainly times where I was intimidated. I mean,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: there's a picture of Herman. It didn't happen early so
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: much because I was always like, look, I'm gonna get better.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. There was
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: a time where Herman was I think it was nine, Um,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: he was on his full doping program, and the guy's
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: legs were just like he's on a table in a
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: lab with with the electro stim hooked up to his
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: legs and he's doing a full both quads, full flection,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: like rocked out, and there's like striation that he had
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: muscles that I don't even know are on a normal
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: human that were like stacked on top of normal muscles.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: And and I was just like, I mean, I put
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: me in the tank for like eight months because I
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: was like, this is garbage, Like there's no way, no matter.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: He's better technically than Miami's on better skis, he's doping,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: he's you know, better technically by a mile. Um, Like
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: what am I talking about here? And and uh, eventually
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: I overcame it but um, I was one of the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: people who because of my ability to take risk and
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and that was my strength, was my ability to sort
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: of motivate myself to take risk and be willing to
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: do that in competition and deal with the fact that
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I was going to fail a lot of the time.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: That was my biggest skill set and I recognized really
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: quickly even Herman didn't have that, I had them in
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: that category. That was my that was my trump card.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And honestly I set up specific split times, which you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: not not that we have to touch on it, but
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: ski oh is my app that I've created now that
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: measures everything, measures exact speed, distance, travel, g forces, all
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: that stuff. During that time of like late high school
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: into early World Cup, I was setting up split times
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: because I needed to know how fast am I. I
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: needed some positive reinforcement. I couldn't finish races. I was like,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I only care about how fast I am for these
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: two gates. I need to know that I have like
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: elite level speed for two gates, and I would see
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: what I could do for two gates. In the middle,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: of course, I would set up a specific split time
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: for six seconds, and and that really helped my confidence
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: because I was like, look, I haven't figured it out yet.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: I certainly can't do it for fifty four gates in
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: a row. But for those two gates, I am way
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: faster than anybody in our country and possibly the world.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And that was sort of the thing that got me
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: over the deficiencies that I had in every other category
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: because I was kind of the middle of the road
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: type dude in fitness, technique, endurance, um. You know, equipment,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: you know, tactics, understanding of hills, snow conditions, inspection, everything.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: But in a couple of categories, I was elite level
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: and I had to figure out how to ulize those
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: and capitalize on them. Okay, to what degree was doping
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: a factor? To what degree is it's still a factor?
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And you famously said you didn't care if anybody doped,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you could still beat them. Yeah, I don't know that
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what I said, but I think you covered
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: the gist of it. Um, I you know it was
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: It's always been a thing. I think it's been a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: thing in virtually every sport since the beginning of time.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think guys used to chew coca leaves
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: back in the old days, when they had little foot
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: race over in Greece. But um, I think that there's
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: there's a misperception that doping does it for you, that
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: you dope and then you're just better, and that's just
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: not the case. The guys. The the big, the big
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: advantage of doping as you can train more and you
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: recover more quickly. So half the doping stuff isn't even
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: enhancement things, it's recovery things. So if you can train.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, the cost Lish family, I love them, they're
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: great people. They both had organ failure later on their
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: careers because they were on these programs that allowed them
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: to ski twice or three times as much as every
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: other World Cup racer. And they got really really good
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: because they trained three times as much as any other
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: World Cup racer, but it also caused organ failure. And
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: for me, I was kind of the mindset of like, look,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: this isn't Tour de France, Tour de France. If you're
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: not doping, I don't think you have a realistic chance
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: of winning. You know, um, you know football, if you're
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: not doping, you know American football, you're likely to get
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: beat up throughout the season and not recover as well.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: And you're gonna get thrown around by guys who are
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: that's but in ski racing because it's a minute or
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: because it's two minutes. I felt like if I was
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: willing to take the risk and great, I had to
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: adjust my criteria, I would have loved it w of
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the races I was in, but that just wasn't in
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: the cards for me. I was like, I can get
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: through a minute, and it's more going to be about
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: my intensity and my risk taking and how I can
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: manage that. I'm I'm capable of beating even guys who
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: are I'd always dealt with it. Guys who are much
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: fitter than I was, much more technically sound, better equipment,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: and I beat them before, so I didn't really see
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: that as a massive problem. I just felt like I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: wasn't gonna win the overall very many times because guys
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: who were on that recovery program were just more fresh
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: all the time, and I was not. Okay, so you've retired,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: then you wanted to come out of retirement using the
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: full tilt boots, using Bomber. Skis Head said, no, Ultimately,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you had a relationship with Bomber. Now I have a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: relationship with cross and take us through that evolution. Yeah,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: when I quit, I was I was well, well, good
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: and done, um, but I still had things a bit
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: like Rocky and Rocky six right. There was I wouldn't
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: say there was skeletons in the closet, but there was
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: things in the basement that I wanted to do and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: you can't do them on your local ski hill. You
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: needed a World Cup forum and with the conditions and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: the level of safety to actually put them to the test.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: And it was more honestly, it wasn't about winning races.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about proving anything. It was simply about understanding
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: what was possible with equipment and things like that. And
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: it was the first time I've had the handcuffs off
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: in eight years, um out from under head. And I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: retired with the intent of not doing that. But then
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I got on the skis. I skied on him for
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: this project for Samsung up in Lake Louise and my
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: my good friend Craig Daniels, who had been with me,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: and we had some technology like Skio on the skis
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that were measuring things. He was following me with a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: with a big follow cam trying to get this footage
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: for them, and and he after about the fifth run,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: he said, dude, I've never seen you ski like this.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: He's like, if you raised a World Cup right now,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: you would destroy people. I was like, I was like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: I know, I feel the same way. It's I'm able
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to move because the boots flexed straightforward instead of out,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: and because the skis were designed with much less sidecut
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: but a slight hinge point in the middle, I was
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: able to hold almost tuck down the steep pitch and
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: in like Louise where c turn would normally be in
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: a super G And he's like, I've never seen anything
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: like this, and that that got me excited because I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: felt like my at that point it was really about
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: legacy and what I was giving back to the sport.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: And I felt like if I understood that, and I
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: could evolve equipment and ski boots to be able to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: allow your average person to have that same confidence level
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and improvement, um, I'd be doing something good for the sport.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: And it was a bummer that they shut me down
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: because I think in the end it would have been
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: great for head as well. Um, but it is what
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: it is, Okay. That must have been very frustrating. There
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: was no way to work that out. Johan Johan is
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: a peculiar cat. Uh. I love him, he's a good friend.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: We're friends now still. Um. But that was a very
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: American business um litigation. I mean, he had he sent
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: me a seven hundred page he moved forums three times,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: tied us up and send a seven hundred pages because
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted mine was one page that I sent him.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: It was here's what I'm requesting, here's what we said before. Uh,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: you're not paying me anything anyway. It's illegal for you
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: to block me from making a living in my in
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: my profession without pay, without compensation. That that's illegal in Colorado, California,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the US. Basically, Uh, he moved for hum
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: three times to jump that around. All he was trying
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: to do is tie us up until the season started
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: so I couldn't do it. And UM, you know, I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: can respect somebody who's efficient at what they want to do,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and he was, so I can respect that. But in
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the end, I think we all lost out. Okay, bomb Or,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: after you got involved, turned into more of an expensive
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: boutique SKI. Ultimately you left and went to cross on.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Tell us about that. Yeah, I think you know, coming
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: from where I was at that moment where there was
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: still potential to race, there was still this development. Then
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: as that game unrealistic with Johan kind of putting his
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: foot down on me, Um, we moved into that other
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: space and it was not where I wanted to be.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: So UM, I had a contract, I wrote it out.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I did my best for them, UM, wish them all
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: the best, but wanted to go with a ski company
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: where I could see my vision really come true. And
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: quite honestly, I don't care about building skis for super
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: rich people or I think skiings expensive enough as it is.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I went through it as a young person. I would
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: love to build skis and make them good enough that
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I could sell a million pairs of skis a year
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: for two hundred dollars a pair, and build them for
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: eighty dollars a pair and sell them all direct and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: make twenty dollars a pair, and I make a bunch
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: of money. Um. You know. And even then, if I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: did that, I'd probably dropped the price to one fifty,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: because I think it's obnoxious that skiings as expensive as
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: it is and as inaccessible as it is, UM, and
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I would love to see that change that, so they
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: were kind of going the opposite direction with Crossing. At
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: least we have the you know, full raine and really
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: interesting background coming Chase coming from aerospace, and access to
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: crazy smart engineers and unique performance materials and practices coming
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: from an industry that's very unlike skiing. UM, and and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: we are trying to do some really unique stuff in
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: this first year. I mean we start in June and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: we have two different models, three really that are absolutely
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: exceptional at the top of their individual classes in the sport.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking forward to next year. Okay, but is
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: your goal with Crossing to bring the price down and
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: turn volume way up? Yeah? Eventually, UM, you know, I
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: think it'll be some re engineering. I think there will be.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: There's a few steps, intermediary steps that have to be
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: seen to first UM and obviously we have to be
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: economically viable to get there as well. So my long
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: term goal is yes, is that, um you need a
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: certain economic model to to make it work. But I
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: think we're pointing in the right direction absolutely, and ideally
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: I'd love to build race keys. Again. I think it's
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: it's embarrassing that we don't have any American aid race skis,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: and uh, every other country as you alluded to before
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: with you know, Atomic Rozzi, you know every company. Maybe
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: Italy is the only comping that doesn't really have a
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: homegrown superpower race ski. But um, I want to build
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: American made race skis and really kind of give the
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Americans advantage for once. Let's talk about the crossing skis
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: that are available. Now, did you have a hand in
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: developing those? I did everything from exact side cut, earlier rise,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: exact construction everything. Okay, so what makes them special and
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: different from what's presently on the market. Um, we'll focus
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: on the one A team because that's the one that
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: I did a good job on and got lucky as well.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: And I it's a twenty seven meter radius, so if
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: you know anything about radius, that's a very long radius.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: That's a fist legal giant slalom radius ski basically, um
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: and it's and so with that long radius, you're not
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: going to get the same turn that you would on
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: an arc. But it's a one A team underfoot, which
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't get that turn even if you made the
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: shovel huge because there's so much torsional for so, I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: matched the point where there's traditional camera where the skis
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: this way to the point where there's early rise, which
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: is really really subtle. When you stick the skis together
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: and you push the base together, there's a tiny little
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: slot of light that comes in between them earlier, and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: that's the radius that you use there, and where that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: is compared to the sidecut, how the ski is still
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: getting wider, and then where that peeks out, and then
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: how you use the actual tip curve, which is how
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: the ski comes up off the snow. That's actually what
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: you use to dictate your radius, is that that early
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: rise in the tip curve. So I'm cheating the system
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: where I have a radius ski that you can ski
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: seventy miles an hour on it and it doesn't jump around.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: It's not crazy. You can make little slow turns that
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: aren't arcs, they're just slid. But it's super consistent and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: reliable and easy to balance on and forgiving works awesome
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: and deep powder sloft chunky snow because it just doesn't
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: hook you on the tail. You never get stuck in
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: the back seat, you never get pitched forward. But then
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: still skis like a seventeen sixteen radio ski. When you
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: tip it up because the actual initiation is coming from
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: the curve of the ski versus the side cut, so
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's nuanced and it's uh. I built it very traditionally,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: you know, nothing magical in it, which again allows me
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: to reduce the cost down. Um. And yeah, I got lucky.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I knew it would be a very good powder ski.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: I was confident there. What I was shocked at is
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: how good it was on hard snow, on ice and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: on groom trails. And the reason that it was much
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: better than I thought was because I had never skied
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: on a ski that was at that shallow of radius.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: So you know, the most you see is two three
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: and even that is usually on a really stiff ski
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: that's just for like high speed bombing and powder runs,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you know, huge lines in Alaska and stuff like that. Um,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: this thing is a normal construction, fairly soft, but when
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: you ski it on hard snow, it just absolutely rips turns.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I was my hip was on the ground for six
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: g s turns in a row down a groom or
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: first thing in this season, and I came out of
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: that and I was like, it exceeded at every expectation
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I had on the harder still which my goal is
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: always to build a ski that works on a big variety.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: There's lots of companies that build really good skis for
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: one specific condition or type of skier. I want something
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that works for everybody, and I got really lucky this year. Okay,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: conventional wisdom and needs to say you're not conventional. Is
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: a hundred and eight team would be a powder ski,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: not a big mountain Alaska powder ski. And maybe you
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: have a hundred and five or a hundred and six
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: for cried your daily riders, hundred maybe for hard snow.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: You have something somewhere in the eighties. Hey, do you
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: agree with that philosophy or is that horseship? Um? I
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: would say it's certainly not horseship, right. And the reason
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: for that is just as I just stated right before
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: that it was a lot of companies make skis that
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: are good in one narrow segment. So if you love
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: Stokely or you love Blizard or you love Atomic, you
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: need five pairs of skis and you need the quiver
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: you just said. I would even go narrowing that. I
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: would go down to something the seventies for a hard ice.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: If you're an East Coast ski and you're going up
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: to Cannon or or Stow, you're gonna want something narrower
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the eighties. But but then everything else you said is
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: virtually right, and you're gonna have a great time if
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you can bring five or six pairs of skis and
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: switch from morning to mid lunch to afternoon. If you
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: had a powder day in the morning, and what I
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: believe that if you do it right you can have
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: virtually you still kind of need two pairs. Um. I
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: skied on pretty firm snow. It didn't snow for about
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: three weeks. There was smicy patches that got scratched down.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't I wouldn't say I enjoyed skiing on the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: one eight teens. If I was skiing in sugar Loaf
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: when it hadn't snowed in two weeks, and you know
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: that refrozen groom stuff where you barely leave a track
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: in it when you're working right, the one teens probably
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a really enjoyable ski there. I would
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: have dropped right down to a one seventies six underfoot
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I mean a seventy six underfoot um, but a much
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: more mela radius than than a typical carving ski. And
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: but beyond that that one een it covers from Big Mountain, Alaska.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, like shoots, it's a touring ski. It's super light.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: It's it's as light as some of the high level
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: touring skis. Um you can ski it fast. He's getting
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: crud junk. I have some videos of my buddy that
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: I mentioned before, just going crazy on the thing. And
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: he's all of a d thirty five pounds, soaking wet,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: and he's one underfoot and he's shredding these hard wind baked,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: sun baked moguls um bouncing and shooting around and just landing.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: And they're always right where they belong. They're always right,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: you know, grips right under his foot. He's totally on it.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: And that that ski covers out here, it covers every day.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: There's no other ski that I would ski on out here. Um,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: you know, on the East coast, you'd want something narrower.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: But I'd ideally like to get it down to two
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: two pairs. Okay, there's a whole school of thought now.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Really the business was changed by the Razzie one oh six,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the Yellow Soul seven, And there are people who have
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: been in the business a long time say this is
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: not good for your knees to have wide skis. Do
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: you have a lot on them? Yeah, it sounds like
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: live s tales stuff to me. I've heard a lot
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: of people saying that, you know, we had FIST regulations,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: right we scrapped When I was on head, they made
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the skis now out of University of Salzburg, which is
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Austrian government controlled, and had we were kicking the crap
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: out of Atomic, So of course the University of Salzburg
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: came up with some data that said if you make
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: the skis two millimeters wider, everyone's gonna be way more safe.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: So we all had to scrap thousands of pairs of
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: the fastest down will skis on the planet because they
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: came up with some arbitrary data. And then two years
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: later the injuries were worse and they said, up, we
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: were wrong, and but you couldn't add edge with to
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: make your skis wider. So we scrapped all those keys
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and started new and that helped Atomic because we're all
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: back on level playing field. And then two years later
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: they realized their data was garbage and they scrapped it.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: So it's I think that's where that comes from I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: would say that a wide ski with a lot of
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: sidecut because your shovel it becomes so big that it
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: actually can hit and it has a huge surface area
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: that if you hit a bump, or you hit loose
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: snow or a pile of slough, um, you're gonna you're
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: gonna get a huge reaction if it's not designed just
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: right um. And that huge reaction oftentimes goes to your
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: knees and you're back. And so I would say a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: wide ski should have very little side cut, and you
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: have to figure out a better way to make it turn.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: If you do that, I don't think it has any
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: impact on safety. Okay, let's talk about materials. The big
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: breakthrough was metal in the fifties and sixties. Then we
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: went to fiberglass. Okay, we had the strato of the
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: VR seventeen, but then we had Rozzie the Rock five
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: fifty for gs that was metal. Then Solomon entered the business.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: They had a cap ski. So the traditional thought now
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: is you want metal for harder surfaces, for torsional rigidity.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: And then you talk about one eight teens. Conventually they
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: will have no metal in them. What's your philosophy on
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: materials and construction. Well, metal is not great for torsion
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: in the sense of the properties itself. What it's good
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: for is torsion and traditional layup is comes from shearing
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: effect of the of the material. So if you have
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: a bunch of layers, those layers when they twist, they
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: have to rub against each other. They don't just twist,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: uh you know, as one big chunk, they actually shear.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: And that's where you get your metal doesn't it has
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: a hard bonding property. The surface has no other particles
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: that it creates a really solid bonds of Tortionally, it
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: affects it that way. But the property itself, metal twists
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: actually much easier than glued fiberglass. Fiberglass is the strongest
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: for torstional uh control. Um. The reason we don't use
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: metal traditionally, and you know wider skis is just weight.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just too it's just too damn much material.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: You'd use a piece of metal this wide and uh,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's too much. But the other part,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: metals really damp and would metal together have a really
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: interesting frequency um dampening properties. So you know, we we
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: always use you know goodwood cores in our wide skis,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: but we're using rubber instead of metal and fiberglass instead
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: of metal. So fiberglass to control the tortion because as
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: it gets wider, you can really control torson very effectively. Um,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: you don't add all that weight. And then he use
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: rubber inserts around the edges in certain areas to to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: dampen the vibration and have a damp ski. And Um again,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I'm a believer that there's no one way to build
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: a great ski. Um. Like I said, I'm the first
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: to give credit to companies that have built great skis,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of different ways to go about it.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: I want to do it in a way that's super consistent,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: gives people a huge range of of you know, conditions
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: that the skis perform optimally on. And a ski that
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: one eighteen I put a dude on it the other day.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: He's never skied before, his first day on snow. He's
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: one underfoot and had an awesome time. They switched into
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a black crow at lunch because he was curious, and
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: he went immediately back to the team. He said that
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: thing was garbage compared to this. It's so much easier
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: to balance on this and control of the edges. So
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I think that done correctly, the sky is gonna work
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: better in all conditions and for all skiers. And maybe
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: that's optimistic, but it seems like it's working right now.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Let's just talk about course. Course, we're all would the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: breakthrough in the seventies was foam, then we went back
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: to wood. Dina starts putting some foam stringers in what's
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: your philosophy there? Yeah, I think I think hybrid um. Honestly,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's the application for carbon fiber and potentially
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: other exotic materials as well as stringers vertical stringers of
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: carbon fiber. Uh, think of like an H box of wood.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: So an H of really thin but super dense wood, oak,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: beach poplar, you know, maple, um, ironwood, There's all kinds
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: of wood that would be really interesting but super duper
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: thin in an H. So you have an I beam
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: type structure which adds a lot of the properties. Then
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: fill the top and bottom of the H with foam
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: with carbon stringers um. Ultimately, I've tried to have that
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: core built for six years. Hasn't happened yet. I'm patients,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: so hopefully through. I believe that a hybrid core will
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: will be where we end up. Okay, but we'll foam
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: break down like it did in the seventies or just
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: not really a structural material. No, it's it's not. In
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: seventies there was they had bad foam. I mean now
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: they have aerospace foam that does you can have do
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: anything as zero temperature fluctuations. It's that can't shatter. It
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: has like a fifty thousand and a half life and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: uh fully recyclable. I mean my goal ultimately is to
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: have an exoskeleton ski, so carbon fiber um metal elastomer's
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: frame and then foam injected and then metal top or
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: potentially fiberglass or high density rubber polymer top over it,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: and then you'd have a ski that everything was dictated
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: by this skeletal system underneath, and that's how all your
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: flex was dictated. The foam dampens it, and the tops
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: just to protect it. When you're done with a ski,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: just heat it up, peel at apart, and everything is recyclable.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's it's a shame that nobody has taken
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: that seriously. There's millions and millions and millions of cubic
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: meters of waste coming out of the skins every single
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: year because of that. Okay, if one listens to you
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: in the landscape and the news and podcast et cetera,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: you seem to know everybody you have a relationship with
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: all these technical people. Did they come to you because
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: if you were fame or is your personality such that
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: people end up being drawn to you? I don't know, Um,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: I only know the results. I can't speak to the motivation. UM,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of people. I enjoy learning and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: talking about concepts and ideas. I'm not a talk about
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: this person or gossip type person. I like talking about
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: inspirational things that um haven't been done or you know,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: creative ways to collaborate. So I think that's appealing. I
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: think we're in an interesting time right now where you know,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: connectivity is much easier than it was ten years ago,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: right with the Internet. And I mean, you can get
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: to anybody, so if somebody wants to get to me,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: they can get to me. So UM, but yeah, I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: feel very lucky to have, um had the relationships I've
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: had and continue to grow because you know, I don't
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: know nearly enough yet. And uh, I learned from a
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: lot of really smart people that I surround myself with
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: all the time. Okay, but you're involved in your app Skio,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: you have the ski company, you have the educational thing.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: How many projects are you actively involved in and what
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: are they? Thirteen? Uh? Really actively? Um, but there's another
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: six or seven that are kind of where I'm a
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: I'm a role player. Um, but not it's not my
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: primary thing. Uh. Snow Cookie, which is Skio Crossing Ski Company,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: I c L is my academy, Rivo sunglasses, goggles, helmet development,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: trying to make things safer and better. Um, my relationship
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: up here in Big Sky which is Spanish peaks, Moonlight,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: forward facing real estate, all that stuff, Kuto which is
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: a C too C booking platform, so you would book
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: me to take you skiing here. And sky First is
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: having to pay eight hundred bucks for an instructor. Um,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: a really good dude. Uh. Friends started that and I
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: help him as tech. My clothing company that I'm not
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: officially involved with any longer because they're kind of plateau
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: ng but um. Alchemist Alpine uh company out of l
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: A cannabis and medical stuff around cancer research and swim
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Pals are wearable like a watch that strounding prevention. After
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: losing my daughter, we we got really involved in that
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: and want to stop that from happening, so we were
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: inventing some new stuff. I'm working with the Nest guys
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: Jamie simmon Off and guys at at Amazon for all
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: that snow Bonn, which is the indoor ski hall. I'm
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: a shareholder and it's outside of Denver now, but we're
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: working on partnering with resorts and replicating that so that
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: in these population hubs in Houston and Dallas and Atlanta,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: you can have these kids who would never be exposed
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: to skiing go in and for thirty bucks experienced skiing
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: and then package something together to have them go up
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: to a local area for a tenth the cost and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: UH and get out. Their APEX is UH Technologies company
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: that I'm in through my roommate at c v A,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: and they optimize UM everything from data security now that
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: especially with COVID, everyone's going digital. It's a huge new
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: push in that space. And their Ninja's flow code is
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: Tim Armstrong's company was the CEO at A O L
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: when I was there ten years ago, and we became
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: friends and that's an advanced QR code. It's the fastest,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: quickest scanning QR code. So like now when you go
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: into restaurant, your menu is that QR code. He has
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: those that take you to a flow page that can
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: do incredible stuff. He's just a wizard. Romp and Roost.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: We're building kids stuff because we have six six kids alive.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: We would have seven if we had lost my daughter,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: um parents stuff these you know, uh packing plays and
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: travel accessories. When you go to a restaurant, how come
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: it's such a pain in the ass with the high
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: chairs and all that. And then Zortech, which is a
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: shoe company that's doing smart shoes, so very similar to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: um to Skio where you get all his data out
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: of your skiing the smart shoes, I want to put
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: in Schuman's residents in of the shoe with a p
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: c oh so you're basically like you're walking around with
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: your feet in the grass or feet in the dirt
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: all day because I think this electromagnetic field disturbances we're
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: getting right now are kind of messing with a lot
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: of people and so and then at the same time
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: as giving you Shuman's Residents all day in your shoes.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: They're also giving you, you know, har rate variability and
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: steps and stress levels and stress patterns. Hey, when you
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: walk down this street you're super stressed every day, Maybe
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: don't walk down that street. So, um, it's a that's
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: there's about like I said, six more, but um, those
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: are those are the main ones that I'm pretty heavily
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: involved with. Okay, how do you have the time? How
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: do you have the time to have even one of
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: those in ski? Those those fit into the six percent
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: of the time that I'm not dealing with my kids
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and and uh and wife and eating drinking wine. But
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: are you actively involved? Needless to say, having your name
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: attached to something is beneficial to an enterprise, But to
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: what those are? Those are all? Those are all very active.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: Those are things where I have calls, maybe not really,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: but very active all the way from R and D
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: to marketing to partnerships and getting things lined up, I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: mean everything. Those are Those are heavy involvement. And I'm
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: I'm efficient, I am. I mean, you know, I dropped
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the ball all the time and every one of them.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: I'm very upfront. I'm like, look if I if I
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: tell you I'm not not getting on that call. I'm
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: not getting on the call. If you want to go
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: find somebody else, fine, But like you know, so I'm
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: open because I don't have the ability. I'm not a
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: nine to five or I have. I literally fit that
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: into the ten percent of the time where I'm not
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: managing my kids and all that. I mean we have
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: we have three kids who are two are under in
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: the house, and it's there's not a lot of time
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: that I can get this. This is a miracle that
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: I've had this time. My wife's being an angel right now. Okay,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: just to go a little deeper and then just a
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: couple more topics. Uh, what's the difference between Scio and
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: this product that is being heavily hyped now Carve? Yeah,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: car I mean honestly, I love what Carve was doing.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: I've been in conversation with them. I know. The problem
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: with that is their mechanisms. So they're doing it on
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: the boot, They're doing it in the sole of the boot.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm never one to hate on anybody, but
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: to disrupt somebody's boot, you have to, you know, insert
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: this thing underneath your footboard. You're do what you're talking about.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: If you're doing your boots, right, there's no space in
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: there to put that in there, so you're doingfications. But
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: then but then also you're only able to capture certain
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: data because the boot only does certain things. And what
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: we did ours is three sensors. It's one on either
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: ski just in front of the binding, and then one
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: on the center of your chest. So we're talking about
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: rotational force. It uses your phone and all the telemetry
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: on your phone as well to have all that um
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: but we can do rotation foraft movement. They do that
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: through sensors in your foot. But again, you're you're getting
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: When I skied on carve, I ripped fifteen ridiculously hard
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: g s turns, perfect balance, you know, in and out consecutive.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: It said that I was sucking and then I slid
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: a bunch of turns, just kind of bopping along super
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: low edge angle, and it was like, great job, great job.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: So I think they have work to do on their
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: algorithm engine. I think there's a place for it. I
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: think a ton of people are going to benefit from it,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: but they're in a they went a route that was
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: more difficult to achieve what I think ultimately is the goal,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: which is to have people have really good, clean, objective
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: data that represents what it's supposed to represent. I can
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: tell you from my experience I was skiing well, and
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: it was saying I was sucking, and then vice versa.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Ours is all built around you know. The algorithm is
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: is legit, there's no if you're skiing better, it knows
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: you're skiing better. And the in the centerpiece on your
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: chest is really really important based because as you know,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: skiing is so much of it's how you're rotating, how
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: you're initiating, how your foraft balance is shifting through a turn,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: what your skis are doing vibrationally, if your edges are matched, um,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: what your pressure is on either edge. We can get
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: all that, um, you know, very easily, as well as
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: you know all the other things that they can get. Okay,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I grew up during the ski boom. Okay, everybody skied
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: in the sixties and early seventies. Having lived long enough,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: I know there are other of things. You know, there
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: was a snowboard boom. Snowboard is actually decreasing slightly, not
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: that just did a big thing. How do we reinvigorate skiing? Um?
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: I think accessibility. Uh, if you look at the barriers
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: to entry and skiing. It's no wonder that we have
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: like an eight percent atrician rate, so eight out of
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: tend people who ski for the first time don't try
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: it again. Um that's been flat for about the last
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: thirty five years. So UM, that's a problem if you're
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: if you're charging people enormous amounts the snow Bonn, So
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: if you combine just and this is a big part
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: of it, right, This is why all these projects become
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: doable is because they're not these off on tangent silo
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: little things. They're all connected. Snow Bonn is an indoor
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: ski hall that allows people to learn to ski in
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: about thirty minutes, from never having put ski boots on
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: before to being able to go up onto a resort
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: in ski blue runs snowplow, turn either direction, hockey stop
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: on either side in twenty minutes for thirty dollars. So
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I want to replicate that in population hubs, and I
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: want to tie it to the resorts because the lifetime
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: value of a skier at a resort for Veil, for
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, Ask and whoever, that lifetime value is enormous.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: They can afford to give them a break for that
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: first time, to get them interested, to get them psyched,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: um get them hooked if you will. So that whole
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: package is one piece that ties in with Crossing, because
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: I'm building special skis that actually work better on the
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: carpet because it is this crazy, you know, big inside
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: treadmill with carpet on it or plastic key carpet, and
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: the skis don't work well. They're just using typical skis
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: de tuning them and like, okay, give it a go.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: They need skis designed for that. So we're doing that
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: with Crossing. My goal over the next four years is
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: to reduce the cost of skis um go direct to customers.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: I mean we see retails going to the tank right,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: retails tanking everywhere, and COVID only accelerated that. But there's
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: no reason you need to go into a ski shop
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: to buy skis like to just asn't like with thirty
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: day money that guarantee. Here's the skis two hundred bucks.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: Instead of selling them to a retailer for bucks and
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: then they sell them to you for seven hundred bucks,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: we just sell them straight to you. We can make
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: our margins, everything works, and you pay two hundred bucks,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: so reduce the cost of everything incrementally. There. Um, you
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: know they've already done certain steps, the Icon Pass, Epic Pass,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: those are I think incremental steps in the right direction.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I honestly think there's gonna be a new boom of
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: very small resorts. You need traffic for that, and that
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: hasn't supported that in the past because we've had no
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: growth in the sport. But once these things are put together,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: there's these adventure parks that are incredibly profitable in Europe
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: and they drive people to these other more more exclusive,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: more expensive involved operations. I think that when we spool
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: out thirty five fifty hundred snow bonds in these population
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: hubs and then we can run a ski resort that
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: only operates from December eighteen till March and it has
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: two lifts. You're only accommodating people who are the first
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: three years of skiing, and then once they're better, sure
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: graduate up to some others. But as you know, I mean,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Christina Cosnick, Lindsey Vaughan, you know myself, steen mark on
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: your person. They grew up on mountains. There were no
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: bigger than my driveway is like, I mean, we're talking
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred vertical feet you don't need, uh, you know,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: the Pyrenees to to go out and enjoy skiing and
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: have a great time. So all those things I think
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: play together. I think the industry has been remarkably inefficient
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: at converting new skiers. And you know, but look at
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: ale stock prices. I mean, they're doing all right, so
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: I can't really pick on them too much. But I
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: think that's you know, you go through the early life
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: complaining about all these people doing things wrong, and at
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: some point you gotta step up and start realizing somebody's
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: just got to do it. So that's the phase of
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: it now. And again that parlays with vos. You know,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: everything everything I work on is all aligned in terms
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: of that stuff, so it ends up being a bit
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: more efficient that way. Okay, very quickly, too quick tips
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: piece of advice for people who are experienced skiers technique wise,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean to me, upper lower body separation
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: is the biggest conundrum for people is with sidecut skis.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: Now you can commit down the hill so much more
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: if your skis finishing a turn, coming around and you're
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: used to coming up, becoming neutral and then initiating your
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: new turn and going down and making a turn. You've
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: seen it in World Cup for years now. But I
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: think the exciting thing is get on a really good ski.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: Stokely makes a really good carving ski. We make, I
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: believe the best carving ski. UM A bunch of companies
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: make a good one. And by good I mean super reliable.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: It's never gonna do anything crazy on you, because what
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: we're talking about is finishing your turn. As you're coming
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: across the fall line, your upper body goes over the
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: top of your skis in a low position. So for
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: that little moment, you're basically just letting go. You're relaxing,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: your knees are super bent, your ass is really far back.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: You're just traveling over your skis straight down the hill.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: As that happens, you're putting your place self in a
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: position where you can back up a ski edge angle
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: that's really high, and it's basically upper lower bodies sepreasure.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: You're continuing to turn one way while your body is
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: going over the top, and then your edges switch really
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: quickly from one edge to the other, and the skis
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: initiate so quickly that they dive down underneath you and
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: pick you back up. And I think for experienced gears
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: that's a really something they haven't felt before, and it's
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: it changes entirely the sport because you're in a long legged,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: really powerful position all the time. The only time where
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: you're in that crunched up awkward phase, there's no pressure
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: on You're just flying down the hill. And for me,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: that's how you know that that's the most exciting thing
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: about carving skis. Okay, needless to say, you can make
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: a deal with any of the major companies and endorsement
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: deal and get a big check. Are you into it
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: with cross and not only to make the skis for
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: the upside? And to what degree? You know if these
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: some of these figures are published, but we don't know
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: what you did with the money. How are you doing
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: financially and how are your compatriots who were successful in
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: the circuit doing financially? Um? I mean I'm still working,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: so I'm not doing that good. Um. But it granted,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: my kids and wife cost me a lot of money.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: They know how to they know how to spend it.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: But um, you know, I think we're we're comfortable. I'm
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: very fortunate that I do things that I love to
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: do and I don't do them for money. But I'm
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: fortunate enough to be valuable enough to companies where I
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: can get compensated in a way that makes things makes
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: the wheel turn. Um. But you know the other skiers generally, Um,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: you know, if you weren't number one in the world
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: and winning a lot of races, your work in day job. Now,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: I mean Europe is different. Their icons. They they get
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: sort of taken care of because they're in these semi
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: you know, socialist type countries where they get a lodge
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: or they're they do different things. They're kind of set up.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: But they also have such a different culture over there
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: where it's not an economic ladder. They just they like
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: to do things. So they just run a restaurant and
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: host people because they like to Um. But you know,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: I could if you got any tips, I could certainly
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: use some cash. But um, I'm doing okay, Okay, do
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: you regret not going to college? No, Now, I went
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: to lots of colleges. I just didn't go to college
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: per se. Um. I was at colleges all over the
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: country and all over the world. Um, but no, no,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: I'm a I'm an easy study like coaches that I
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: was uncoachable. I think that's not really true. I think
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: they were just beating their head against the wall and
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: something that I was very committed to, and unfortunately it
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: didn't align with what they wanted me to do. But
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: I learned things really quickly. More or less, stuff that
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: I need to figure out, I can figure out really quickly.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: And as I said, I'm I have some of the
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: best mentors in the world, the smartest people, um, that
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: I've found, and I learned really quickly from them. Okay,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: you've gone on record for political issues and how you
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: view the country. What is your view of the overall
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: state of the United States? And do we have any hope? Uh? Yeah,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: we have hope, um, not a lot. But you know,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: the for me, the problem is that we've we've diverged
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: away from sort of the concept. The concept was that
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the people would sort of semi govern that we would.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: But when you have three million people with hugely diverse
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: backgrounds and priorities and all this stuff, you have to
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: modify the system. It's it can't be a you know,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: nationally governed, it has to be stay governed. I think
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: micro micro governing bodies need to take more responsibility and
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: and and have flexibility there Um. That to me is
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: is where our salvation lies is. You know, you can
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: have different views, you can have different philosophies and different
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: lifestyles and different stuff, but it still has to fall
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: within the parameters of the national That was the philosophy
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: in the beginning. But it wasn't so real then because
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: communication took three weeks to get a letter from Colorado
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: back to Washington. But um or Virginia. But in this case,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you just have to we can't have this
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: this crazy um. You know, these extremist groups that that
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: stuff is garbage. I don't know the solution there. UM
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: that that's problematic because there really are hate groups and
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: then they just they're just angry and want to do damage.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: But some of that comes to um a cultural um.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Feel good about what you're doing, and feel good about everybody.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: And that's because we've sucked for quite a while. I mean,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not a US hater, but I find it really
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: funny that people say we're the best country in the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: world when they haven't really been to a lot of
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: other countries. I've been to a lot of countries, and
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: I can say I think Daniel Tosh says, it is
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: that have you ever been to Fiji, like maybe you
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: go there. You've been to New Zealand, like you know,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: universal healthcare, like you could show up there and break
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: your leg and they take care of everything for you know,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: Bill is not perfect healthcare, like you know. I think
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that unfortunately our government is
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: incapable of doing because of the structure. And I don't
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: know if that's going to change, But on a state
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: and micro level, I think as we transition the renewable
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: energies and we kind of I think we're gonna see
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: a massive influx of job creation and and hopefully more
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: productive direction than we've been for the last two hundred years.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: Um with you know, fossil fuels revolution that was that
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: was inherently terminal, like it didn't you know, capitalism is
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: terminal in and of itself. You can't always be uh um,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: you know, a capitalist culture exclusively. There always has to
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: be some balance. We already have that. The irony is
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: that people ignore the fact that we've been we have
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: socialist programs. We have since the beginning. We've we've always
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: had them. So it's just finding the balance there and
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: hopefully um getting people excited to embrace the differences of
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: our country because unfortunately or unfortunately, there's always gonna be
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: huge variants in our in our people, in our in
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: this country. Final question, this is one of perception for
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: those of us who follow ski racing. Yes, you had
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: that instant success with the K two fours, You did
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: very well in the two thousand two Olympics. Then there
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: was all this hope, in this hype which we get
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: every four years in the Olympics United States. You were
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: the golden boy. The success was not there, needless to say, Also,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: what I learned today, you're talking about certain equipment issues
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: which were not well publicized. In addition, you've gone your
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: own way in a country that thrives on group paint,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: group think, but all the pushing forward is by individuals
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: who were frequently hated in them lauded. In addition, you
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: commented did the play by play so to speak of
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: the Olympics, and as opposed to being bobbed BIATI just
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: being a national cheerleader. You got into the specifics of
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: racing and took a lot of flak for that. So
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: the question is, how do you feel about your perception
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: of yourself. Do you think it should be changed? Do
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: you care if it's changed? Do you bothered if it's
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: not changed. No, I'm not bothered and I don't care. Um,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I feel like that was a big learning
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: experience for me. It was oh six right right. I
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: was petulant. I take responsibility for my own behavior. But
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: it was also not an anomaly. I didn't. It wasn't
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: like that was my time where I blew up. I
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: was that way all my entire life. And the fact
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: was I was unapologetic. I just I said, look, I
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: did my best. I won the I was winning the
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: combined by three seconds, right, ted end up winning the
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: goal there. I was three seconds ahead of him after
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: the first run of slalom, and I was disqualified. Like,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: you know, there's things that happened that they could have
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: changed everything there they didn't. Um. You know, when I
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: walked away from that, I was definitely uh you know,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: I was immature and I was not prepared for what
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: I was dealing with. I was the top gun on
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: World Cup. I had I was taking of all the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: demands and press and everything else, and I just I
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't good enough and I needed to improve and I
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: knew that so UM when I came back after the
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: OH nine semi retirement into two thousand and ten, UM,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: I was really proud of how I'd evolved in that
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: four year span. And I came back a different type
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: of person, much more capable, much more broad skill set,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: capable of dealing with real adult things and and being
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: clear about my prerogatives, but also much more um effectively
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: talking about what I felt was important and how I
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: could make that work with your average you know viewer
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: who's just an American who wants you to say, go America,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: where the best? So I'm gonna win for you, guys
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: like I understood that in that time frame. And it
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: took that failure in OH six and all the fallout
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: of that to learn. I mean, it's just the reality is,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: you learned through those struggles and and uh, I've been
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: super I wouldn't change a thing about that. It was
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: an ass kicking at the time, but it's not the
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: first as kicking I've taken. It certainly won't be the last.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: So to come into ten and win three medals and
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: really kind of give the American people what they wanted
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: in my on my own terms and with that expression
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: and my my comfort level. Unfortunately I missed that stop
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: on the on the attributes trade train when I was
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: being created that I didn't feel satisfaction about that part
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: of it, like I proved anyone wrong or anything. I
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: just felt good that I had evolved and hopefully matured
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit where I was more capable and not
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: making the same stupid mistakes i'd make made before. Yes,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: but at the Olympics, Lindsey Vaughan was the heroine with
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: one gold medal, and you had a better performance than
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: anyone had ever had in the Winter Olympics skiing as
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: a male, and they gave you a fraction of the attention.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: But as as you said, no, as you said, there's nothing,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: especially American culture, putting somebody on the pedestal and then
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: they want to knock the pedestal out, you know, and
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: then they want to build you back up, and then
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: they want to knock the pedestal. The thing that was
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: interesting about that is because I retired in oh nine
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: and I didn't start my Olympic run until August. I mean,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: I was fatten out of shape and had no skis,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: no technician, no nothing going into the World Cup season. Um,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: they didn't have any time before I was six, and
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: that summer going into six, I was on a cover
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: of Time, Newsweek, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated. You know, that
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: was the build up, That was the pedestal. They had
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: no time. Nobody could scramble. They'd already they'd already put
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: Lindsay as their person. They were pot committed to her.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: So the fact that she delivered, they were on board.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: They were like, yeah, see, we were right. She's our
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: American hero and they had for me. I was a
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: side note. Because they had they couldn't validate, you know,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: not the individuals, but mainstream press likes to be right right,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: So the fact that I did well didn't help them.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: They were They weren't upset individually, but as a as
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: an industry, they were upset because they didn't have the scoop.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: They didn't have it, you know, set up right to
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: capitalize on that. And so, um, it's exactly what I expected.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: And as I said, I was very aware of that
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: by that point, and they didn't upset me at all.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: I was really proud and excited to have you know,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: like I said, matured and got better and then delivered.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn't
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: matter how good you are, how mature you are, It
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: comes down a hundreds of the second. You know how
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: tight those races were. And at the end of the day,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: those performances that I put down there my the actual
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: skiing I did to get that gold medal in the
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: combined what I did in that slow on course was
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: was nothing short of a miracle. I mean I was
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: that was the that was the pinnacle of what you'd
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: hoped for of yourself in an Olympic environment. And uh yeah,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: to do it after having let people down and let
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: myself down the way I didn't know six was was
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: a miracle. And then obviously fourteen I pulled off, you know,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: a bronze medal that I was as proud of as
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: any medal that i'd ever you know, had in any event.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: Why is that the night before my brother it's supposed
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: to go to that Olympics, that he was going to
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: go as a snowboarder. It would have been the first
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: one we've been at together, he passed away into um
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: and before I should have won the downhill, I was
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: crushing guys in the training runs conditions change, we could.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: We didn't have the skis to be competitive on the bottom.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: I was losing a second and a half on the
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: bottom just going straight across, you know, eight hundred yards
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: um and I end up losing in my stronger events,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: and the super gew was kind of the last one.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: And uh, the night before I took my goggle strap
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: off my helmet and I replaced it with with one
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: of those um physio bands, you know, those bands like
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the red and green that you used to stretch out,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: And so I replaced it with one of those. And
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: I thought about doing that for ten years. I don't
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: know it's I put it in the wind tunnel. We tested.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: We knew that that made a difference, and I said, look, tomorrow,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: a hundredth is going to make the difference. And so
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: I replaced that for the first time in four hundred
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: and thirty World Cup races, I replaced it and tied
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: for third place. So one hundredth slower and I have
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: no medal. And I come out of the Olympics, you know,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: dealing with all the press of no medals. Just that
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: one bronze medal saves all that stuff. But also it
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: was it was really indicative of my level of of
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: commitment and you know, and ingenuity and and and self reliance.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, no one did it. I was the only
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: dude in the race with a rubberized goggle strap that
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: in a wind tunnel, I know, makes point oh six
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: percent difference, which was theoretically in a in a minute race,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: which that was is a second. So and I and
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: I one hundred slower and I get no medal. So
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: you tie for second, you're one hundred slower, you just
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: got a bronze, no problem. You tie for third, one slower,
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: you get nothing. Bronze medal is important. And at that
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: point I was the oldest Olympic medalist in history globally.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: Um it was. It was massive. And to know that
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: all other things excluded that goggle strap that I've done
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: for the first time in my whole life, uh made
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: the difference, got me a metal. Um was was interesting
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: and obviously, uh you know, I felt like, uh, you know,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: it was it was a testament to my commitment and
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: the representation of my my commitment to getting better and
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: not leaving any stones unturned. Okay, And the comments that
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: you got in reaction to your play by play will
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: you do that again? Did that hurt? What was the
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: blowback from the people on the inside who hired you. No,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: they loved it. I mean we got way more positive
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: feedback than negative. Um, because anyone who was a skier
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: appreciated it because it actually instructed them and formed them
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: of what was going on. They found that really educational
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: and interesting and much more than just a cheerleader. Um,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: which was my intent. I mean, honestly, I feel like
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest failings of of this industry has
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: been education, has been informing people, you know, democratizing information
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: and UM. So that's where the way I approached it.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: I after that Olympics, it was live prime time in
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: the US. I was a big one for me to
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: just know that I could do and be there and execute.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: But afterwards I was like, I'll do it again, but
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: you're gonna pay me ten times as much and you're
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: gonna fly my family. I can't be away from my
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: family for three weeks. And in China, Korea, UM, And
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: I think they see it as talent is more or
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: less interchangeable, and in this case, um, you know, they
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: hired Lindsay, which I'm I love Lindsay so I'm looking
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: forward to seeing what she can do. And where are
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: all your globes and medals and trophies, uh, bunch or
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: in the Ski Museum in New Hampshire. Actually a buddy
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: zoom I was on a zoom call earlier. He was
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: there skiing at Cannon. He zoomed us um from in there.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. A bunch of them are all
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: around different places. I don't. I don't think I have
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: any in my house here, so it's kind of like
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: a musician who keeps their grammy in the bathroom. In
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: any event, body, I so much for talking with me.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: It's really been great. You've been able to answer questions
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: that I've never seen either asked or answered in all
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: of the ski media. So I really appreciate that. I
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. Great to talk to you. Okay, hopefully I
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: can see on the hill one day. And I'm one
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: of those people. I do have those five piers of
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: ski so I know what you're talking about. If you've
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: got one pier of skis, it would work. I'm all ears.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: I'll get this already right out until next time. This
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex