Now appearing at the Peppermint Lounge: the new icon of aerial skiing. He isn’t chubby, but he is a Czech, and he does the twist in a way that would clear any dance floor.
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Ales Valenta cleanly completed a quint-twisting triple–in English, that’s three flips with five twists–for the first time in Olympic competition to capture the gold medal Tuesday.
“He’s psycho, man,” silver medalist and hometown entry Joe Pack said of Valenta.
His total score of 257.02 points and his accelerated r.p.m. were too much for the field, including defending Olympic champion Eric Bergoust of Missoula, Mont., who fell backward on the landing of his second jump and tumbled off the podium.
“It was another step for me,” said Valenta, 29, who just missed winning a medal when he finished fourth in 1998. “I don’t think it was a crazy thing. I’ve been doing this jump all summer and I knew I could do it anytime.”
Aerials skiers approach their jumps on a hill with a 30 percent gradient, swoop up on a 14-foot-high “kicker” ramp that has a 70 percent angle of incline and soar as high as 50 feet in the air. Valenta twists twice during each of his first two back flips, then adds a single somersault with a twist before landing.
“I started to do five twists in different combinations three years ago,” said Valenta, who qualified for the 1994 Lillehammer Games but was unable to compete when he had to serve an obligatory stint in the military. “At the very beginning, I didn’t think it was possible.”
A number of the top men have been toying with learning the quint for a year or more. Bergoust, 32, who was downcast but gracious after plummeting to last place out of the 12 finalists, is one of them.
“We’ve been ready to take a step for a long time,” Bergoust said. “We’ve been doing four twists for, like, 15 years.
“Most people wanted to be conservative because they didn’t think it would take five twists to win the Olympics or they thought they’d get hurt trying it. I thought I might get hurt or my form wouldn’t be good enough. I held off.”
Bergoust was in first place after the first jump, and his mere three flips and four twists on the second jump might have won him the gold had he stayed up on his skis. When he realized he was overrotating, he stretched his arms out to slow himself down, but “my arms are only so long,” he said.
“I didn’t want to get second today. I wanted to get first or last, and I got last,” Bergoust said. “I don’t feel good but, I wouldn’t feel good if I’d gotten fourth either.”
Despite the increasingly high antes in the sport, Bergoust said he wants to compete in the 2006 Olympics, when he will be 36.
Pack had a huge rooting section on hand in the crowd of 14,337 at Deer Valley Resort. His family moved to Park City 10 years ago, and he led the high school football team in tackles as a free safety. A former ski jumper, Pack, who likened aerials to “riding a motorcycle at 100 m.p.h.,” landed the same jump that Bergoust tried to secure second place with a point total of 251.64. Alexei Grichin of Belarus was third.
“My heart sank when I saw him slap back,” Pack said of Bergoust. “He’s Mr. Consistency. This is uncharacteristic for him.
“Ales makes it look easy. It’s technique, and it’s confidence.”