There are some nights when slopestyle skier Joss Christensen wakes up in a cold sweat. In his dreams, he doesn’t make it cleanly through his qualifying runs. Or with eyes closed, he envisions arriving at a ski venue, only to discover he has one ski boot and no time to retrieve the other. When he awakens from these nightmares, he turns to a shelf in his room and sees the Olympic Gold Medal, the first ever in slopestyle skiing, and he realizes that the real dream has come true. And it’s more beautiful than he could have ever imagined.
The dream began before the reality. When Joss Christensen was three years old, his mom Debbie and dad, JD, put him on skis for the first time. The couple met in Park City, after they had both moved there to enjoy the slopes more frequently. From the day they put young Joss into skies, they couldn’t have imagined that they were on their way to raising a slopestyle Gold Medalist. Most people didn’t even know what slopestyle skiing was. And the Olympics hadn’t recognized it as a medal sport.
“When I was 10, Park City was huge for the pros,” Christensen says, “but the sport wasn’t very big at the time, so I was able to follow these guys around the hill. I’ve been in love with the sport from day one.”
As a teenager, Christensen was able to practice his twists and flips on the trampolines and into the pools of the Park City training facilities. At times, his training could even test his parents unwavering support. At age 14, Christensen came up short on a jump and broke both of his heels. ”I had to have two pins in my left heel, and that put me in a wheelchair for a month and a half.” Christensen remembers. “I was on crutches for another month as well. And that scared my parents. We all sat down and thought about what I was doing, but I just loved the sport so much, and my parents could see that’s what I enjoyed in life.”
So Debbie and JD endured watching their son break both his wrists on separate occasions. And the several times he’s broken his thumbs. Or the time doctors discovered that Christensen had completely wore the cartilage off the end of his femur, requiring a surgical repair.
“They never stopped supporting me. Never,” he said. ”They would get scared when I would get hurt, and it was a thought in the back of my head. Not, “Oh, it would suck if I get hurt,” but “Oh, my parents are going to be bummed if I get hurt.” But they stuck it out and were my biggest supporters. My parents were my only fans at first.”
In addition to being Mom, Debbie serves as Joss’ travel agent, making sure he gets to all of his competitions. “She’ll stay up late on her computer when I’m in Europe doing live streams or live scoring,” he says. “That’s what’s really cool she knows the tricks!”
In August of last year, like most skiers, Joss headed out to New Zealand to chase the snow and train. His dad, JD, had been having some complications with his health. Two months prior, JD had a heart pump surgically installed in the hopes it would help cure some of his health issues. When Christensen arrived in New Zealand, he found out that his father had dies at the all-too-early age of 67 from congenital heart failure. Stunned by the news, he returned home immediately to be with his mother.
Entering the biggest season of his career with the loss of one of his biggest supporters, Christensen wasn’t assured a spot on the US Olympic Freeskiing team. His performances had allowed him to find the podium eight times, but he never took home gold in any of the events. When he won his hometown Grand Prix event in Park City, it still wasn’t enough for him to qualify automatically for the team, but it convinced the coaches to use their discretionary selection to add him for the trip to Sochi a week before the team left for the Olympics.
Debbie Christensen couldn’t have been more proud of her son. But financially, she knew she couldn’t afford to watch her son live the Olympic dream person in such a short amount of time. But the Park City community rallied around the family. They raised over $10,000 to help Debbie with her expenses. People donated airline miles. The mother of another skier offered to share her hotel room. “My mom did the travel for a lot of the families that went to Sochi,” Christensen says. “When she told me she was able to go, it was the best news I could have received. It was awesome!”
With mom on site in Sochi, Christensen was free to concentrate on his performance. His first Olympic run was the best of the first round. In the second round, every other skiers tried to top his run. Every other skier failed. As Christensen stood at the top of the slope, ready to make his final run, he new that his dream was real. He had won the Olympic Gold Medal. His US teammates took Silver and Bronze for a clean sweep.
And then the world changed. Christensen was a celebrity overnight. “Usually before when I posted skiing content on Instagram, that would do really well and personal content lie selfies wouldn’t. Then I gained over 40,000 followers instantly. The majority of my followers and fans now are teenage girls. All the comments are teenage girls saying, “I love you Josh, marry me! (laughs)”
The day before his Athletes Quarterly shoot, Christensen visited the White House with his Olympic teammates, where President Obama asked him about the snow conditions in Sochi, and the First Lady told him how proud she was of how the team represented their country.
“It was pretty funny when President Obama started talking about freestyle skiing and boarding,” Christensen said. “The President said, ‘I learned a lot of new lingo from this such as back to back double cork 1260s. I have no idea what any of this means, but I want to say it because it sounds really cool.’ That was one of the coolest things I thought I’d hear, to meet the president and the first lady and that they weren’t just these politicians. I was able to relate to them."
Christensen will be 26 by the time the next Winter Olympics comes to South Korea. He’s hopeful that he will be able to make a return appearance to defend his medal and meet the next President. For now, it’s time to enjoy being the first ever slopestyle skiing Gold Medalist. “I’m still living the dream,” he said. “It’s still hard for me to believe it.”
