Athlete Bios
Freestyle Skiing- Aerials
USA's St. Onge seeks Olympic turn-around
Last Updated: Monday, February 8, 2010 | 2:37 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Ryan St. Onge won the 2009 world championships. (Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty Images)Ryan St. Onge, a freestyle aerials skier for the United States, is the son of a skiing coach and was on skis by the time he was two. He became a member of the United States ski team when he was 14 - at that point the youngest skier ever to make the team.
St. Onge and his older brother, Chad, both earned medals at the 1997 junior world championships, and Ryan won the junior world championships in 2000.
But his time on the slopes was not the only way his childhood was atypical. When St. Onge was in grade school, he lived with his parents and his brother on a boat as they sailed around the Caribbean for nearly a year.
St. Onge competed in several freestyle disciplines before concentrating on aerials. He became interested in aerials after meeting Eric Bergoust, the 1998 Olympic gold medallist in the event.
"For me, jumping is the opportunity to show myself who I want to be," St. Onge said. "I work allowing myself plenty of time, working with nothing on my mind, and without expecting anything. I just jump."
St. Onge tried to qualify for the Olympic team for the 2002 Salt Lake Games but struggled with his jumps throughout the season and failed to make the team.
In his first Olympics, in 2006 in Turin, Italy, St. Onge failed to advance to the finals and finished 16th in aerials. He is hoping that a quintuple-twisting triple-back somersault that he has been working on will help him in Vancouver.
St. Onge won the world championships in Japan last March, becoming the first American aerials world champion since Bergoust in 1999. He also won the United States title and finished the 2009 season ranked No. 2 in the world.
There have been fallow periods, however. St. Onge's World Cup victory in Deer Valley, Utah, last January was his first in more than two years.
