Back in the spring, Park City ski jumper Paige Jones thought that the next year would be a wash after breaking her ankle at junior nationals in March. Yet, she’s now at the ski jumping Olympic trials in Lake Placid, New York, feeling like she’s at 100%.
“I wish I could go back to me in May and tell myself that everything would be OK because I genuinely thought that my career was over for the next year,” Jones said. “I got out of my boot and was cleared to walk again and literally couldn’t go down the stairs normally because my ankle was so stiff and often ankle flexibility is just so important in ski jumping.”
Jones competed for the first time since her crash last weekend in the Continental Cup at Notodden, Norway, and came away with career-best finishes. She finished 10th on Dec. 17 and then 12th the next day. The two results pushed her into a tie for 31st in the Continental Cup standings out of 52 women and second among American women.
“It was really good,” Jones said. “I ended up placing a career-best, which I definitely wasn’t expecting, but it was a nice comeback from (the injury).”
Jones originally planned to compete in the previous Continental Cup competition in Vikersund, Norway, but her skis were lost in transit, creating one more obstacle to overcome.
“Well, when you travel with two-and-a-half-meter-long skis, they don’t show up probably 50% of the time,” Jones said. “But since there aren’t a lot of flights to Oslo, we weren’t able to get them in time for me to compete. Not super far out of the ordinary, but still frustrating.”
Jones will be spending her Christmas jumping, as the ski jumping trials are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. (Mountain Time) and will be televised on NBC. Jones isn’t thrilled about competing on Christmas Day but noted that the extra exposure will help.
“We really want people to watch this,” Jones said. “Making sure that people watch this competition is really important, it helps with our funding, it helps with our reach of our organization.”
As for the Olympics themselves, Jones isn’t holding her breath. The 19-year-old is more focused on her last opportunity to compete in the junior world championships.
“I’m not saying definite no, there’s always a chance,” Jones said. “I think for me at least this season, my focus is not making the Olympics. My focus is having a good season. It’s my last year eligible for junior worlds, and that’s going to kind of be my focus for the season.”
Between coming back from injury and not stressing out about the Olympics, ski jumping is fun again for Jones. It’s taken some time mentally to remember how fun it is to jump as far as possible instead of worrying about injury, but training for the Olympic trials brought her back to that mindset.
“It was really fun, I sometimes forget how much fun ski jumping is because I get so caught up in trying to improve and trying to get better and focus on how I’m doing,” Jones said. “But I’ve had a lot of training sessions in the last two weeks where ski jumping is just fun again, which has been really great, and today was one of those days.”