On the chairlift heading back up to the top of the Olympics moguls course in Zhangjiakou ahead of the medal round, Nick Page could only think about all of the work he had put in since last March. The endless hours in the gym getting his body ready for the Olympics, the countless jumps off the water ramps at the Utah Olympic Park over the summer to perfect his repertoire of tricks and even plenty of rounds of golf during the summer to improve his mental focus.
All of that hard work and preparation all led up to one, 25-second run.
“It all came down to this moment here, going up the lift, taking this run and seeing what happens, which was really cool,” Page said. “I definitely knew that’s where I wanted to be, so I kind of pictured myself in that scenario, so it was really cool to actually get there and see all that work pay off.”
Page put down his best run of his five in Beijing with a score of 78.9. It wasn’t enough to earn a medal — he finished fifth on Feb. 5 in the six-man final — but his performance was a statement nonetheless that the 19-year-old will be a contender in moguls skiing for the foreseeable future.
He made it back to his hometown of Park City last week. After a busy season of skiing and the pressure that comes with first qualifying for and then competing at the Olympics, it was nice for him to see his parents again and his dog, Rusty.
“I just remember him walking in the door and greeting Rusty and then getting that big hug that I had so longed for,” said Sheri Page, Nick’s mother. “Really fun, it’s been good to have him home.”
Making it to the Olympics at the age of 19 is no easy feat, and Nick did his best to handle it well. He found inspiration by watching videos of Shaun White, whom he had the opportunity to meet in Beijing, from when the legendary snowboarder was the same age making his Olympic debut in Torino. While he didn’t bring home a gold medal like White did in 2006, it helped to put him in the right headspace ahead of his competition.
“There are people that do so great in their Olympic debut, and then a lot of people kind of get tied up in the pressure and the event behind it,” he said. “So to go in and just take one run at a time and take all that pressure and use it to my advantage was really cool.”
Nick felt the importance of being in the right mental space after his first qualifying run. He was one of the last skiers to go, and so he watched everyone else do their runs on a television inside a heated hut, which was a new experience. He found himself worrying too much about the other skiers’ performance rather than focusing on just his run. Nick’s ensuing run was by far his worst of the Games with a score of 70.71, which left him well out of the top 10 and meant that he had to ski another run in the hopes of advancing.
“Normally, I’m always up there just thinking about my own run, and I was kind of up there thinking about what everyone else was doing,” he said. “Made the adjustment the next day to find a different spot that was warm, but to kind of just get back into my normal routine, and it seemed to work pretty well.”
From there, Nick qualified for the first finals round and then kept his run at the Olympics alive with two more solid runs to make it to the final six.
Even though he’s back home while the Games are still going on for other sports, there’s no such thing as extended time off for Nick. He joked with a coach in Beijing that the day of the women’s moguls competition, one day after his, was his first mental day off in over a year. One day after landing in Salt Lake City, he was back in the gym getting ready for the rest of the season.
There are three more World Cup events on the schedule, and he wants to be ready to take advantage of all of them. Nick is ranked 10th in the overall moguls World Cup standings. He’s also looking to compete at the junior world championships in his last year of eligibility. He joked that he’s not sure how many people have entered the Olympics before skiing at the junior world championships.
“I think the break time is over, and we still have a season to finish off, so keeping the grind down on that,” he said. “We’ll get back into formal training on snow towards the end of the month, but until then, now it’s kind of getting my body back into shape to take on the rest of the season.”