Fairview High School graduate Casey Andringa dreamed his entire life of skiing in the Olympics.
22-year-old posts best Olympic finish for American in event since 2010
BONGPYEONG, SOUTH KOREA» Casey Andringa couldn’t really believe it was real.
At the top of the super final of six skiers, the Boulder-born moguls skier moved into the starting gate, saw his friends and family raging down below and started to chuckle.
“That was everything I could have ever wanted right there,” said the 22-year-old, Vail-trained moguls skier who wasn’t even on the U.S. Ski Team this time last year and, according to his coach, “threaded a needle in a hurricane” to reach the Olympics.
Yet there he was, the only American in the final six. The Fairview High School graduate dreamed his entire life of skiing in the Olympics. An Olympic medal dangled within his grasp. So … why not try a trick he had never thrown before?
(For those uninitiated in the moguls world, that’s not how it works. Skiers throw only tricks they have practiced over and over before bringing them to a competition. And a super final at the Olympics — the biggest contest in all of mogul skiing — is not a common spot to test a new trick.)
“But I knew that if I wanted to get on the podium, I was going to have to land that trick. Right there, I said, ‘I’m going for it,’ ” Andringa said.
He reached for the truck driver grab — that’s a hand grabbing each ski — in the middle of his already ridiculously difficult corked 1080. He touched his butt down a bit on the landing. In an Olympic super final, that mistake can’t get a medal. He ended up fifth, the best finish for an American man in an Olympic moguls competition since 2010. He couldn’t have been happier.
“It was definitely the hardest run I’ve ever thrown. And I knew it was going to take that and I’d rather go for it and go for broke and miss it than just lay one up and be sitting in fourth because I had more to give,” he said.
Andringa came to South Korea and quickly was mesmerized by the Olympics, captivated by its spell of severity.
“I felt like I had to feel a certain way, like I had to be moved by every single second of it and I have to feel this seriousness and intensity just pouring through me,” he said.
So when Riley Campbell, his longtime coach at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail, suggested two days ago that he needed a break, he jumped in a car with his brother Jesse and a bunch of friends, and they had a big night in Seoul. They ate — his favorite new dish, which he only described as a “cheese river” — and laughed and joked. It was fun.
“It just brought back that lightheartedness. That’s why I ski moguls. I love skiing bumps, but it’s about the people and the culture and the places I get to go, and I was starting to lose sight of that,” he said, describing how the city trip two days before the biggest competition of his life helped him refocus.
Andringa wasn’t on the mogul world’s radar a year ago. He set out to change that last summer, camping in the woods for two months outside Steamboat Springs with Jesse, living a simple life and focusing on training on Steamboat’s water ramps, working out, going to bed early and eating right.
In December, Andringa won six runs in a row at U.S. Ski Team selection event at Winter Park, an unprecedented streak that continued right up to Monday night’s Olympic super final in South Korea.