Jon is obviously a legend in the sport and ESPN posted a pretty good article on him a couple days ago. I personally couldn't be more excited to have him start filming again and hopefully get back into competing. It is long, but definitely worth the read.
It's early October, and Jon Olsson has just landed on the Spanish island of Ibiza via private jet. Of course he has. The 32-year-old Swede is, after all, the ski industry's playboy -- driver of fast cars, schusser of World Cup race courses and, a few chapters ago, master of X Games jump lines -- all with a perfectly coiffed blond mane and a cozy home in Monaco.
Olsson is in Ibiza with his girlfriend, Swedish fashion blogger Janni Deler. He caught a bus from Monaco to Nice, France, where Deler had a meeting, then flew to Ibiza for the weekend on a whim. "I don't really know what we're doing," Olsson says. "I've been here a couple times, but usually just in and out, a couple days. I'd see nightclubs but not much more. This time I want to see the island from a different side, so we'll stay easy on the party plans."
After six years as a ski racer chasing a berth in the 2014 Winter Olympics, earning a top-50 world ranking in giant slalom but failing to qualify for Sochi, Olsson recently decided to return to the sport that made him a star: freeskiing. The nine-time X Games medalist last competed in Aspen in 2009, finishing second in Ski Big Air, and knows it won't be easy to pick up where he left off. As such, instead of rushing back into the competition scene, Olsson recruited a filmer to follow him around while he hits jumps and skis powder this winter.
He plans to publish the footage in regular installments on his video blog, which was once a hit among freeskiers but dissolved after he began racing. The website that houses his blog, jon-olsson.com, clocks 250,000 unique visitors per month, Olsson says, which, combined with his 155,000 Instagram followers, has helped him keep mainstream sponsors like Red Bull and Audi despite his dropoff in results since he spurned jumps for gates.
Olsson's comeback announcement surprised many, for good reason. A promising junior racer before he switched to freeskiing, he returned to racing because he bet a friend that he could make Sweden's Olympic alpine team. During the past six years he paid little attention to freeskiing, even though he still ran his popular Jon Olsson Invitational contest each spring.
"I was so focused on racing that I never thought at all about going back," he said.
In December, Olsson hit a freestyle jump in Tandådalen, Sweden, for two days. He threw a few smaller tricks -- switch 540s, flat 5s, cork 360s -- then landed a handful of double cork 1080s, one of his signature tricks before he left the sport. When he saw the edit in early March, he thought, "I'm pretty good for a guy who doesn't jump anymore."
Given he had just blown out his knee during a race training run, Olsson put off making a decision about his future for four months. When that time ran out this summer, he was still fixated on jumping. The itch wasn't going away until he scratched it. On Sept. 28, he made his intentions public.
You could argue the comeback was inevitable. Olsson, who's as much a businessman as an athlete, has a hard time sitting around. With racing in the rearview, he needed something to do besides work on his brands and his tan. Freeskiing represented an obvious option.
Known for holding himself to high standards, Olsson has gained perspective since he left -- namely, embrace the lessons that failure delivers.
"Racing is so tough that if you only appreciate the good days, you're going to go nuts," he said. "I learned to also appreciate a day when I was sucking -- I was still on a beautiful mountain, living a great life -- rather than just look at the results, which was what I did back in the day."
Olsson had no desire to compete again until he attended the Freestyle.ch big-air contest in Zurich, Switzerland, and watched skiers land the vaunted triple cork. Now he is entertaining thoughts of returning to X Games Aspen in 2016.
"Since I've been to Zurich, I've slept like three hours a night," Olsson said. "Because I keep YouTubing all the tricks and thinking about all the tricks I want to do.
"The main challenge will be to get gnarly enough at age 32 that I can actually [contend]. On a perfect jump with no wind and two years of training, then I think I can be up there. But it's just a matter of breaking barriers that are tougher to break when you're older and also having good jumps to do it on."
To that end, Olsson believes the only factor holding back the sport is a dearth of premier training grounds. He wants to help younger skiers reach the elite level "without risking their life," he said.
"When you do triples, you need big jumps, and when big jumps go bad, it can be very bad," he said. "There aren't too many triple-friendly jumps that are up the whole year. Having a place where people can consistently practice in perfect conditions would help a lot."
As for his personal goals on the comeback trail, Olsson leaves it simple. "If I can ski the way I want," he said, "then I'll be happy."
