Moseley just misses a medal, but he's on a roll

He wows the crowd during the freestyle moguls, but places fourth.

By DAMIAN CRISTODERO, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 13, 2002

PARK CITY, Utah -- Jonny Moseley was too slow. Much more important, though, he is just too cool.

Moseley knew that by performing his monster new jump, the Dinner Roll, in Tuesday's freestyle moguls competition, he would be sacrificing speed on the hill. But he also knew that he would be staying true to the artistic roots of his sport.

It was a no-brainer for the 26-year-old from Tiburon, Calif.

Moseley rocked the SRO crowd of 14,327 at stunningly beautiful Deer Valley Resort by sticking the Dinner Roll, the first executed in a championship round of Olympic competition, and striking a blow for all those who want to keep, as he said, "the free in freestyle."

Moseley finished fourth, behind Finland's Janne Lahtela, the United States' Travis Mayer and Frances' Richard Gay. He said that was secondary.

"The nice part about going for it and losing is that I did something sick," Moseley said. "And the crowd was stoked."

That it was. As soon as France's Johann Gregoire finished his run, the crowd began to roar. It knew who was next and what was coming.

Moseley had said he would perform the jump, in which he rolls with his body parallel to the ground, regardless of how the judges might react.

All of Tuesday's competitors performed their jumps with bodies perpendicular to the ground. It has been that way since the sport made its Olympic debut in 1992. Moseley figured freestyle moguls had waited long enough for something new.

Moseley, his face on a huge screen at the base of the venue, smiled at the crowd that chanted his name. Someone held up a sign that said, "I'm hungry, bring me a dinner roll."

All was in place. Moseley started his run.

It was last summer, while training in Chile with the U.S. team, that Moseley first tried the Dinner Roll. It was as much out of necessity as creativity.

Moseley came out of retirement to defend his gold medal from the 1998 Nagano Games. But he cringed at doing the same tricks he had used four years earlier, and he knew he needed something to prove to his younger peers that he was still all about innovation and not reputation.

"I came back because I thought I should," Moseley said. "And in the end it became a very personal thing to do something special."

Moseley's take: Freestyle moguls became stuffy and stale while he was gone. There had been no evolution from what he had helped establish.

The tricks are generally the same. And jumping, the part of the sport that geeks the fans most, is worth just 25 percent of the final score.

Speed is 25 percent. The smoothness with which racers handle the moguls is 50 percent. That is way too much structure for a free spirit.

"They should just hand out scores however they want," Moseley said of the judges. "Look at that run. You can't judge how technical the left twister was or the right twister was. You look at the run. Was it sweet? Was it better than the other guy's? Score it."

The real problem with the Dinner Roll is that it takes so long to execute that it kills Moseley's times. He ran 30.65 seconds in the first round, easily the slowest of all qualifiers, and placed 11th.

He was first in the hearts of the fans and his peers.

"You listen to the crowd and you know when Jonny Moseley goes," said Jeremy Bloom, who finished a disappointing ninth. "That is great for the sport.

"More and more in the future we'll see crazy stuff like that," Canada's Jean-Luc Brassard said. "It's going to be an evolution."

Call Tuesday's competition a revolution.

Moseley's first jump on his final run was a triple twister. The crowd went wild. As he hit the ramp for his second jump, the din deepened.

Airborne, Moseley's body went parallel to the ground. He spun once, twice. The crowd was off the chain, and Moseley had a place in history.

"Jonny did great," U.S. coach Jeff Wintersteen said. "The Dinner Roll was awesome. He was going just huge on it."

Moseley's time of 28.56 knocked more than two seconds off his qualifying run and put him in first place. He was third when Mayer, the day's final competitor, took second and knocked him off the podium.

Later, Moseley announced that he is switching from moguls to the half-pipe for the next X-Games.

Someone suggested that he will leave the discipline as a legend.

"It's hard to call yourself a legend," he said. "But it was a huge deal for me generally to go up there and do that."

Where is he going next? To New York to host Saturday Night Live on March 2.

How cool is that?

SURPRISING SILVER: On the U.S. developmental team less than a year ago, Mayer qualified at the Gold Cup in December, an event in which the winner gets an automatic spot in the Games regardless of what he does the rest of the year.

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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