Freeski pioneer David Wise: Three-peat beckons for American original with ‘nothing to prove’

“I remember sitting there and thinking to myself ‘wow, I might die’,” David Wise said of the moment in April 2019, at a film and photo event in Austria, when he “sent it too hard, did something dumb” and crashed into a three-foot shelf of ice.

He shattered his femur – the longest and strongest bone in the human body – into three pieces.

“If you rupture that femoral artery, which runs right along the femur, it takes only three to five minutes to bleed out and die,” added the 31-year-old American. “So I kind of had to face my own mortality there and I realised, ‘wow, this could be it for me’.”

Fortunately for Wise, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, it wasn’t the end. “When I was up in the helicopter, I realised I wasn’t going to die, so that was kind of good,” he half-laughed, last month, speaking to Olympics.com ahead of this third straight Winter Games.

First Olympics since massive crash

These Beijing Games are Wise’s first since his catastrophic injury. He’s been building back ever since “in so many stages” and he's admitted that “there are still some things that I did in PyeongChang [at the 2018 Games] that I can’t do”.

And while it was no picnic to qualify for the Beijing Games, Wise – the only man to ever win Olympic gold in freeski halfpipe since its debut in Sochi in 2014 – has developed a new “sense of gratefulness” for “normal things”. And he believes that everything since the crash is “now a blessing” – even the small stuff.

“I didn’t really ever doubt that I would qualify,” Wise said after finally sealing his place in Beijing in the last qualifier in Mammoth Mountain, California with a first podium finish (second place) of the season. “But every single qualifying event just didn’t quite go the way I hoped.

“It went right down to the wire,” added Wise via video chat from his home just outside Reno, Nevada, with young son Malachi, a fixture on the freeski world tour, climbing behind him to a loft – trying to hog the spotlight same as he did when his dad got on the podium in Mammoth. “It was definitely a little more of a fight than I was expecting, but that’s probably a good thing as it made me more hungry.”

Hungry is a good word for Wise. Even at his age. A world and four-time X Games superpipe champion, he’s spent a full decade pushing the envelope in the sport of freeski halfpipe. Like most Olympic-level skiers, he can’t remember his first time on skis. “We just went skiing every weekend,” he said of growing up around Reno, which he describes as a wonderland of outdoor options – from mountains and Alpine terrain, “some of the best skiing in the world,” to high desert and pine forest.

“It’s like walking," he said. "No one remembers their first time walking – those two things probably happened near the same time for me.”

Pioneer spirit from early on

It’s no surprise that Wise pushed the boundaries early. And while he doesn’t remember his first time skiing, he vividly remembers his first crash. At four years old, he launched off a big jump “because I was a crazy little kid” and landed in a pocket of deep powder.

“I just sunk,” he said with a chuckle. “The combination of the cold and the pain and, like, the fear made it one of my earliest memories.”

His first time in the halfpipe is also crystal clear – again informed by agony and a willingness, compulsion maybe, to push the limits. A group of older kids at Alpine Meadows, near Lake Tahoe, came up with the idea of a height contest – to see who could launch out of the pipe highest. And Wise being Wise, he “understood the concept. If you go really fast, you’re going to go really high”.

He hadn’t thought much about the landing, though, which came too low in the transition “after popping way too hard”. He smashed his face into his own knee. “My eye swelled all the way shut and it was gnarly.

“But I won the height contest,” he made sure to confirm. “So I guess I got what I wanted.”

Wise’s father wasn’t thrilled about his son’s forays into the developing world of freestyle skiing, which was moving on to slopestyle, big air and halfpipe from its earlier roots in moguls and aerials.

“He wanted me to grow up to be a ski racer like he was,” said Wise, whose older sisters also raced Alpine, looking back to those first early moments of seeing a larger world on the slopes around Reno. “It took some convincing, but I think he’s OK with the way things turned out.”

An American original

Wise has an independent streak to be sure. An avid bow-hunter, he even harbours ambitions of a post-freeski return to the Olympics in the sport of archery. He lives a self-sustaining lifestyle and hasn’t “had to buy meat from the grocery store” since 2015, subsisting mostly on game and what he raises at his home.

He’s a perfect illustration of the renegade spirit of both his sport and, as he sees it, his country.

“I mean freeskiing got started because people got sick of doing moguls and wanted more terrain and more jumping. They wanted less people telling them what they could and couldn’t do,” said Wise.

“People who end up in freeskiing are outliers," he said. "They're people who want to do something totally different from the status quo.

“And I’ve noticed that too about our country,” added Wise, who travelled to Beijing as part of Team USA alongside the likes of slopestyle riders Colby Stevenson and Alex Hall. “We’re rebels at heart. We don’t like to be told what we should or shouldn't do. So I think the USA freeski team almost represents the country as well as anybody else because we are individuals.

“We like our freedom,” he added after a pause.

Wise knows the rewards and risks baked into freedom better than most. He’s got a metal rod running up his leg to prove it. The harder you push, the greater the risk. Go higher and fall harder. He has the memories of too many crashes to count. He also has a pair of gold medals at home.

But now, at his third Olympic Winter Games and into a second decade in the halfpipe, he’s no longer the wildest pusher of envelopes. He’s the old pro, wily of mind, watching and waiting for an opening in among all the bombast of youth.

Swapping strategy for cutting edge

“In the earlier part of my career I was the guy on the cutting edge. I was the pioneer doing new tricks that no one had thought of before,” said Wise, who looks at the likes of 20-year-old Kiwi Nico Porteous, Canada’s Brendan Mackay (24) and USA teammate Aaron Blunck as the future of the sport in among the “most stacked field” he’s ever seen.

“Now I can be a little more reactive,” Wise said of his new circumstances. “I can say ‘all right, that’s where you’re taking the sport? I can go there too.’

“I don’t think I would be nearly as motivated right now if it was still up to me to be constantly innovating,” he added.” I’m the veteran. And I’m at the stage where I’m excited to see where the younger ones take it and to see if I can try to still beat them if I can.”

With nothing to prove, Wise wonders about the possibilities of these third Olympic Games. It’s a chance to three-peat and keep the glory going, something a self-professed “super competitive guy” might not be able to resist. It’s also a chance to relive the greatest moment in his career, one that brought together the two most important elements of his existence: family and freeski.

“PyeongChang was like a fairytale,” Wise said, remembering how his skis came off in his first two of three runs and not knowing if he should play it safe or leave it all on the line. “My coach said ‘you didn’t come here to land a safety run and get bronze. If you fall, you fall.’ So I went for it and got the highest score of my career. It was definitely the best run of my life.”

Completing the podium

The victory didn't feel complete, though, until he saw his family – Alexandra, who he married when he was 20, daughter Nayeli and son Malachi – peeking up over the crowd. “I was like: I’m going to get them,” he said. “Getting them out there with me, and even on the podium, that’s the unbeatable moment for me.”

The fairytale is a tough act to follow. And Wise knows it.

“I’m just always reminding myself that I have nothing to prove,” he said ahead of his third Games, compromised by serious injury but still hungry, still with the wild little kid somewhere inside willing to go all the way to the line – and maybe a bit over.

“If I get there and do the run, basically the run I’ve been planning since stepping off the podium in PyeongChang, then I’m not going to be disappointed,” he said nodding, almost in conversation with himself.

“I would love to have a three-peat,” he added, willing to dream farther still. “I feel like I have a chance. The opportunity is there. It really comes down to one moment – and I kind of like that.”