Pittsford native and 2022 Olympic gold medalist Chris Lillis returned to Bristol Mountain this week.
He and other members of the U.S. Alpine Freestyle Team are in town preparing for the final stretch of Olympic qualifying events that will take them to Quebec and Lake Placid. The U.S. Olympic team will be announced in late January — ahead of the Winter Games, which open on Feb. 6 in Italy.
We caught up with Lillis by phone as he headed back to Bristol. Here's an excerpt from that conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
What’s it been like being back at Bristol?
"I mean, I keep a very strong connection to the Bristol community, and, you know, to folks back home. It's always great to be around the kids, especially the Bristol Freestyle team, with how much it's grown, and now that, the fact that we have a nice young crop of young jumpers on the U.S. development team from Bristol, it's even more rewarding to kind of get back and come jump with those guys a little bit."
Getting to this point where (the Winter Olympics are) literally like a month away, or a month and a few days, I guess, what are the feelings right now? Is it sort of a point of relaxing a bit, or the nerves go up?
"The nerves are always the same. I mean, we train our entire lives for these kinds of moments. And every Olympic season is extremely exciting because we get to push forward and go compete and try and live that dream. I would definitely not say the nerves go down as the Olympics come closer, but I have a lot of experience, you know, qualifying, and I've been on World Cup tour for 11 years. I went to the 2022 games, was able to take home a gold. So the only thing that I'll really say is I know what I'm in for, and I feel prepared to handle that when the time comes."
That's what I was wondering — if having been there before, if that makes this a little different this time around, or how it's different.
"It's always different. One thing I always say to people when they ask me, is that, you know, when an event like the Olympics is every four years apart, every time that I've gone into an Olympic season, you know, I'm a different person. My life changes. So I'm a lot older than I was four years ago in athletic terms. So dealing with different things, not really injuries, but more aches and pains, not quite as young as I used to be. The first time I went to go do it, I was 18. Then you're 22, now I'm 27, so each time just feels a little bit different, and the challenges are a little bit different. But the goal remains the same, and that's to go, you know, bring home medals to the U.S."
You mentioned some of the younger skiers ... I don't know how much time you've got to spend with those younger athletes, but just what you see with those younger kids and the kids coming up.
"Well, I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with them. I've even coached many of these kids at different points, you know, mostly during the summertime, when I'm not competing, but I'm very familiar with their jumping. I will say we have an extremely talented group of jumpers from the East Coast and from Bristol. You know, if you want to put a benchmark on it, I'm an Olympic gold medalist, and these kids are far ahead of where I was at their age (Editor's note: Lillis qualified his first back flip at age 9). So I expect big things from them going forward, but getting to the Olympics is a long path, and so they've just got to keep training, keep getting better every day. And I'm sure that if they do that, then we might see some future Olympians from Rochester, New York."
In this last month, do you change up your regimen ... to make sure you're staying healthy? I don't know if you back off any of the training or anything like that.
"It's honestly the opposite. So, you know, there's two kinds of ways to go to the Olympics. There's the way to ... stay safe and make sure that you get there. And then there's people that go to win. I'm going to win. So my training package and my training will actually be more aggressive, and the tricks will be a higher degree of difficulty than they normally would be leading into the event. The only way to be prepared for the big moments, you know, to go land quint twisting, triple backflip in the Olympics, is to train it and is to push yourself in training. So really, it's going to be all gas, no break until we get there. And, yeah, you just got to kind of trust your training and your skill and your coaches to try and, you know, keep yourself safe. But I've never been the kind of person that really has wanted to go to the Olympics just to go. I go because I want to bring home medals, and that's what we're training for."
If I could just back up a bit, what got you started in in skiing and particularly in freestyle or aerial?
"I got into it pretty early, you know, following along with my older brother. I used to follow along, kind of wanted to do everything that he did. But then nowadays, I mean, it's just been my life's passion. I've enjoyed competing for the ski team, competing in the Olympics, and also one of the biggest prize of my career has been able to build up and help build up this Bristol Freestyle team, and now watching some of these young kids make the U.S. development team, and kind of follow along that same path that led to me, you know, making the ski team and making the Olympics ... it gives me a tremendous amount of pride, because I'm watching these kids start the beginning of what I hope to be a really great journey for them."
How early on was that your goal?
"I never really remember a time that I didn't want to be an Olympian. I think my very first sports dream was to play second base for the Yankees. I never played past Little League, so I'm not sure that one was really real. But the best way I can describe really wanting to be an Olympian is it starts when you're a kid. And it's kind of like for me, I would say it was probably 9 or 10 years old, is when I really got into the idea of competing in the Olympics, watching athletes like Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, who was kind of famous for the 'Hurricane' (jump) and he got second in the 2010 Olympics, as well as mogul skiers like Hannah Kearney and Jeremy Bloom. I used to watch that on TV growing up, and thought, 'Man, I'd really like to be an Olympian.'
"But it starts out as a pipe dream, and then as you train and as you compete and get to higher-level events, it just kind of becomes a little bit more real, you know? And so every step, every new trick, every new competition, every rung up the ladder you go, that that dream just becomes a little bit more of a reality. But I would say that I really can't remember any time that I thought that I wouldn't become an Olympian. Just kind of always thought that that was going to be my life's passion, and was a fortunate enough and lucky enough to make it happen."
I don't know what sort of the general age expectation is or, if you're looking at this (as it) would be your last Olympics?
"Well, I guess the way that I look at it is, I look at every Olympics, especially since I've been on the ski team and been like a serious contender to go. Every Olympics is its own four-year project. So I have not necessarily made any decisions past this February. With that being said, I still am at the top of my game. I've been a top five jumper in the world for the last five years in a row, and I'd like to keep jumping, and I'd like to hopefully compete in that 2030 Olympics, but it's gonna be a little bit of soul searching and just a little bit of, you know, personal time to think about that once this four-year project is done."
