Freestyle Skiing

yes Eight years ago, aerialist Steve Omischl had the physical tools to reach an Olympic podium but lacked the mental toughness. Four years later, Omischl was mentally strong but a serious foot injury curtailed his quest for an Olympic title.

Now 31 and facing his final Winter Games, the native of North Bay, Ont., is of sound mind and body as he takes his final crack at the gold medal that has eluded him twice before.

Omischl is a superstar in his sport, with a resume that includes four World Cup overall championships, five Canadian titles and 20 career World Cup victories. But it's a pair of less impressive showings that stand out the most - mischl placed 11th in his first Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, then slipped to 20th at the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy.

Omischl has explanations for both performances, beginning with Salt Lake, where he admitted he didn't know what to expect as a 23-year-old making his first Games appearance.

"I was overwhelmed at how big and flashy everything was,'' Omischl said in a recent interview. "Instead of competing in places where nobody really cares, we have 20,000 people in the stands and there's all this media attention. As a young kid, I definitely got caught up in the expectation of it all, and I got away from remembering what got me there.

"That was probably the biggest lesson in Salt Lake. There may be Olympic rings everywhere and there may be a really big village with lots of other athletes and lots of media attention, but at the end of the day I'm still doing the exact same thing I've been doing on the World Cup circuit for years.''

Omischl immediately began to focus on honing the mental aspects he lacked in Utah, and his efforts paid immediate dividends. He finished second in the overall standings in the 2002-03 season, then captured his first overall title the following year.

He remained a force in 2004-05, finishing second overall and putting himself in prime position to win Canada's first-ever Olympic aerials gold at the 2006 Turin Games.

But while he finally found himself in an ideal mental state, Omischl's body wasn't willing to co-operate. He suffered a plantar fasciitis injury in July 2005, a painful inflammatory ailment that affected the arch of his foot. He was forced to miss several months of training, and entered the Olympics completely out of his comfort zone.

"I was told, 'Don't do anything, let it rest, let it heal, and we'll see where you're at once things start to get better,' '' recalled Omischl, who competed in just three events leading up to Turin.

Being told not to train in an Olympic year left him feeling helpless.

"And I had won the world championships the year before, so here I feel like I'm ready, I'm good, I've conquered the expectations I had after Salt Lake, and I'm ready to go into Turin, and then I miss six months of my preparation,'' Omischl said.

Forced to make up for lost time, he attempted a jump with a high degree of difficulty in the Turin semifinal, but couldn't stick the landing and wound up missing the final.

The result was devastating to Omischl, and set the tone for a dismal performance by the men's aerials team, which was expected to win at least one medal but went home with nothing.

On one hand, Omischl defended his decision, suggesting he needed to try something challenging to make the kind of progress he would have needed to succeed in the final.

"I was anticipating that it was going to take a really hard jump to win or be at the podium at those Games, but I hadn't competed in the weeks leading up to the Olympics,'' Omischl said. "The semifinals was pretty much my first event of the season where I was kind of healthy, and my first event back, I'm trying to compete with a harder jump than I had ever done.

"In the semifinals of the Olympics, I'm trying to do a harder jump than I had ever done before in hopes that in the finals, I was going to be ready to do an even harder jump that I was going to need to compete against the best in the world.''

Omischl realizes the decision looks silly now.

"It's crazy to think back that was our plan, given the level I was jumping,'' he says. "I was jumping at an OK level, but not at a high-percentage level where you're going to be fine.

"My percentages were going to be lower on jumps that I'm used to competing with on World Cup for years, and here I am, trying an even harder one in hopes that I'm going to do an even harder one in the finals?

"It sucks, but that's what you get when you roll the dice. Sometimes you win big. If I had landed that, and then reached the finals and landed (my next one), it would have been the greatest comeback, in my eyes, after being injured and coming back. When you gamble, you win big or you lose big, and I lost big.''

Omischl didn't stay upset for long.

He followed up the fiasco in Turin by winning three straight overall World Cup titles ('07-'09), capped by a dominant '08 performance that saw him win six out of nine World Cup events while failing to reach the podium just once.

Omischl says he's proud of his ability to bounce back.

"I rededicated myself to replaying the numbers, not gambling,'' he said. "I made sure I was doing everything I could to put myself in a good position in every competition.

"Did every one of those competitions work out? No. Did some of them? Yes. Percentage-wise, was I a much better (competitor)? Yes. And I'm proud that I put in that effort to get to that level.''

That Omischl was able to regain his world-class form comes as no surprise to anyone who knows him. A fiery competitor even as a kid, Omischl quickly outgrew ski racing at the North Bay club where he trained and began building ramps to provide more of a challenge.

"You start off doing twisters or spread eagles, more of the mogul jumps,'' said Omischl. "And then as I got older, it was more like your buddies egging you on, you know ... 'Do a flip!' You're a kid, having fun. So I was into the sport before I knew it was a sport.''

He joined a local freestyle program as a teenager, and as he watched Jean-Luc Brassard win gold in men's moguls at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, Omischl became hooked. While Brassard served as Omischl's prime source of inspiration, it wasn't the Olympic dream that attracted him.

"I never was motivated by the Olympics when I was a kid,'' Omischl said. "I thought it was a cool sport first and foremost, and I just wanted to get better. I was never like, 'That's my end goal, to win an Olympic gold.' I was just like, 'This is cool! I want to get really good at this sport.'''

He did - to the point where many consider him the greatest aerialist in Canadian history. And while Omischl knows he has plenty of helpful information he can pass on to the next generation of jumpers, he isn't sure if that's the path he'll take when his competing days are over.

"If I got into coaching, I think I could do a great job with guys on our development team, help them get to the next level of their game technically and mentally,'' he says. ``I believe I have the experience to know what it's taken to get to that next level myself.

"Do I want to do that? I don't know. There's lots of things that can happen in the next couple years. Who knows what avenue I'll end up on.''