If you really think about it, Jonny Moseley made skiing cool again. In the late 1990’s the sport of mogul skiing was freestyle. Glen Plake, Scott Schmidt, the heroes of big mountain skiing, their time had come and gone and all that was left was snowboarding. Moseley pushed everything forward: the Californian–who learned to ski at Squaw Valley–was experimenting beyond daffies and back scratchers and straight-legged 360s with grabs and off axis rotations and, god forbid, inverted aerials. Standard stuff nowadays. His 360 Mute Grab in 1998 at Nagano–where he won Gold–and his “Dinner Roll” in 2002 at the Salt Lake Olympics literally brought the first mainstream attention to freeskiing as he was bucking convention within the establishment.
And while the modern Jonny Moseley is pretty darn humble, along with a handful of French Canadians, he kinda helped jumpstart the freeskiing revolution, especially when, in 1999 he lobbied the International Skiing Federation to allow Olympic athletes to compete in important professional events like the X Games. Gus Kenworthy and Joss Christensen and Bobby Brown and all the skiers that are making the sport look so incredibly good today, can thank Moseley for kicking their sport in the pants.
So as we head into X Games this week in Aspen, Moseley sat down with The Inertia Mountain for a Headspace session to talk about his own inspirations, being a pioneer, the state of the game and how rules will always be made, and broken.
Edit: Canted Angle Productions.
