A mock comp at a mock venue with real-deal athletes

Utah Olympic Park. Photo: Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah. — The Spence Eccles Freestyle Pool at the Utah Olympic Park has a lot of things going on a lot of the time. Every weekend in the summer locals and visitors spectate past, present and future Olympians perform flips and tricks into the pool. Every day in the summer, athletes train jumping off human-made structures made of wood, metal and plastic which simulate the sensation of doing the exact same jumps on snow in the winter. 

Lucky visitors to the park might catch a glimpse of Eric Burgoust’s gold medal he won in Aerials in the Nagano 1998 Olympic Games by training at the pool as he coaches on the pool deck these days. He brings it to work with him to ‘the Park’ once in a while, because he can. The UOP is a United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) Official Training Site. The pool’s sole existence is to facilitate safe winter ski landings via repetition, lots and lots of repetition.

Not even did the aerialist compete at the UOP during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games instead doing so at Deer Valley Resort which also hosts an annual World Cup event.

Performances and training have been the bread and butter of the pool for the decades the pool has been in operation. That’s why, on Saturday, when the P.A. system at the pool had analytic announcing of names and countries and not the daily mix of eclectic music, people stopped and took notice, even more so than usual if that’s possible. What they noticed was what Jack Boyczuk, coach of the Park City Ski and Snowboard (PCSS) Freestyle Ski Team calls a competition simulation.

Athletes representing Canada were in town competing alongside athletes from the United States Freestyle Ski Team and PCSS Team. Real judges judged real tricks from real competitors giving real International Ski Federation (FIS) point scores, however, the points didn’t count towards anything. 

Boyczuk said, “We use these simulations to give the athletes a chance to perform under pressure and to break the chain of monotonous training. Winner gets bragging rights among the other competitors until the next competition.”

Those bragging rights went to USA’s Justin Scheonfeld who attends Utah Valley University and has been on the US Ski Team for four years, Canada’s Lewis Irving, a PyeongChang 2018 Olympian, and USA’s Christopher Lillis who has a sixth place World Cup finish on his resume. They finished first in the three finals respectively for the men. The women’s winner was USA’s three-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell in both finals. 

Though these mock comps are few and far between, spectators are encouraged and welcome when they do occur with free attendance. The Ukrainian Team, frequent flyers on the UOP freestyle jumps, will be at the next mock comp being held on September 25 and 26 before the pool closes for the season whereby training literally and figuratively pivots to the adjacent hill or ‘volcano’. Athletes will wait for the snow to fall and be made, coaches will use wooden forms and shovels and build out the ‘kickers’ from snow allowing the teams to train and have local and national actual competitions all winter replacing these simulation competitions. 

Freestyle Aerial events will be held this winter in the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games.