PARK CITY, Utah — For Big Air skiers, the difference between medaling at the Winter Olympics and not hinges on one trick.
Nail an aerial move more cleanly and more complicated than your competition, and you're likely to be headed to the podium. Play it safe or crash, and those dreams will be dashed.
Mac Forehand knows better than anyone else. In the 2022 Beijing Games, he finished 11th in freeski big air overall, behind his American teammates Colby Stevenson and Alex Hall. And it's why, on a hot and sunny July afternoon six months from the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, he's at the top of a giant ramp preparing to perfect a trick that could land him gold.
"It's only been done in competition by one person a couple of times," he told NBC News. "Birk Ruud did this trick in the Olympics when he won gold."
Its name is the switch triple cork 1980 mute grab — requiring a skier to launch off a jump backward before completing three off-axis flips and 5½ rotations.
Big air is a head-to-head competition in which skiers trade aerial tricks. Each gets three jumps, with the two highest scores combined to determine their overall ranks. The skiers are judged on difficulty, execution, amplitude, landing and progression.
Forehand knows he can't play it safe in the Olympics, and the tricks he ultimately decides to attempt might not be chosen until he stands at the top of the mountain in Livigno, Italy, next month But on this day he has his sights set on learning — and landing — one of the rarest tricks in the sport.
At Utah Olympic Park, a year-round training facility used by U.S. skiers competing in multiple disciplines, Forehand, 24, of Vermont, flew down a ramp whose dry, slick fibers mimicked the speed of snow before he was flung as high as 60 feet into the air. Sometimes he landed the trick; sometimes he didn't. Every time, he finished in a huge airbag to break his fall.
Then he went back up the hill to do it again.
Forehand, in his own words, explains to NBC News the before, during and after of the trick that could give him Olympic immorality.
'I put a lot of pressure on myself'
My mom and my dad grew up skiing, not professionally but for recreation and for fun. We were weekend skiers in Vermont. ... I started skiing when I was 3 years old. I was a mogul skier growing up. My sister was a mogul skier, and on the East Coast, moguls used to be a bit more prominent. You either were an alpine skier or a moguls skier. ... Then one summer, I went to Mount Hood with [Stratton Mountain School], and I decided to do park and moguls. One week of park, one week of moguls. I'd always ski park for fun, or freeskiing for fun, and just enjoyed it. And that's kind of how I fell into it.
I put a lot of pressure on myself going into the last Olympics. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to get a podium. I really want to do well. I want to get a medal." But it was my first time, and I pushed myself maybe a little bit too hard in training and just had a run that was way too hard for me to be consistent. If I were to have landed the run, it would have been a different story.
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I think now I'll go in and be like, "OK, I'm gonna tone it down for qualifying, make sure I even get into the final." And then in the final I can let it go and fully have a really good run.
We really break a trick down [in our minds beforehand]. For me, if I'm doing a triple cork, which is three flips, I'm thinking about it in three separate flips. What am I doing in the first flip? What am I doing in the second one? What am I doing in the third one? And also, what am I supposed to be grabbing? Tail grab, Japan grab, double Japan grab — there's tons and tons of grabs. It's about thinking about where your body position is going to be, where you're going to be grabbing, where you're looking.
Going blind
Air awareness is where you know where you are in the air. It's a huge part of our sport. If you don't know where you are, you can't land on your feet because you don't know where the ground is and where the sky is.
The first progression of this trick is a switched-up cork 1260 mute. You take off backwards, switch 1260, you flip two times, and you grab mute. And that trick I learned when I was 17 years old. I've been doing it for so long now. It's like the back of my head. I can do it with my eyes closed.
The next [progression] after that is a switch triple 1620 — it's the next step up from the 1260. Last year I did it at almost every event. I did it in slopestyle events. I did it in big airs, and it did really well. That's the next step.
And then I learned the 19[80] this year in Mammoth [Mountain, in California] in May. I did it on the airbag when I was 21. The last Olympic year, I did on the airbag. I never did it on snow, for some reason. I think I just couldn't really find the right time to do it. But I kind of knew I wanted to do it this year.
This [trick] is a lot scarier, because instead of just adding another flip to the 1620, you have to "go blind" for a second, where you look over your shoulder and you can't really see what's happening. ... Terrifying. You just don't know what's happening. You don't really know what's up and what's down. ... You just have to trust that you're going to get around and get that little spin in the middle of the trick, because you're adding another 360[-degree rotation] into it. So you have to kind of go blind for a second in the air. You don't really know what's happening. But then once you get that little rotation in the middle of the trick, you kind of like look past and let it keep going, and it just works.
You see a lot less of what's happening [in the air] because you're spinning so much. If my takeoff isn't good, then I can't do it. If I miss my grab, I can't do it. If I am spinning too slow but I commit to the trick, I'm gonna land on my face because I'm not spinning fast enough. There's so many variables going on that if you don't get it right, you're just going to really hurt yourself.
'It's do or die'
[The key to a good takeoff] is getting the right power: how much spin and flip you're getting and your positioning of your body. Your takeoff, sometimes you can rush it. It's called going early. Your skis take off when the jump ends. Or your body is in a weird position before the jump is off. It's about being patient and, like, letting it happen but also getting enough power to spin enough. If you're too patient, then you're not gonna have enough time to get it around.
You're not thinking much when you're in the air. On the takeoff, I will overthink the s--- out of a trick. You don't really want that. You kind of want to know that you can do it. But in the middle of the air, you're determining if you're going to commit to the trick or if it's like, "Oh, it's not gonna work. I have to chill or try to open up and survive." But the middle of that is almost too late. You have to make a decision right after the takeoff. Once you hit the jump, you have 10 feet of air time. That's kind of when you're like, "It's do or die."
The last three-quarters of the flip you can kind of be like, "I'm good." But it's hard to tell how big you're gonna go. Say you're in the air, and you're like, "I'm good," and then you are at that last three-quarters of the flip and you see "oh no, I'm going waytoobig." You have to know if you have enough air time to get that s--- around.
I'm a lot more experienced now [than in Beijing]. I feel a lot more confident in my skiing. Hopefully I can turn the recent success and do a podium there.
