Making Team USA: Nate Roberts

 

Most likely, Nate Roberts will hear his name called when the 2010 US Olympic moguls team is announced on January 26, thanks to his recent podium at a World Cup event in Finland. But he can’t relax. He can’t coast. He is still haunted by what happened four years ago.

 

Welcome to his nightmare.

 

In early 2006, he was also vying for a berth on the Olympic team. Then, as now, it was crunch time.

 

Roberts was the 2005 world champion in moguls but it didn’t matter. The US had so much talent that he needed a top-three finish at a World Cup event to qualify for the team. His last chance to make the cut for Torino was on January 22, in Lake Placid, New York, and it all came down to one run.

 

Roberts placed third in the preliminary round which gave him an advantageous starting spot in the final. As the third-to-last skier to compete, he stood at the top of the run knowing: “I just need to make it down [cleanly] and I’d make the Olympics.”

 

Off the first jump, Roberts did a “back full” (a backflip with a twist) – a move borrowed from his childhood career in aerials – but when he landed, his pole snapped. He skied the rest of the run with the broken pole, but four bumps from the bottom, he made a costly mistake.

 

And that was it.

 

Seventh place.

 

The reigning world champion would not compete at the Olympics.

 

His decade-and-a-half-old dream had just unraveled in 24.1 seconds, and his parents had flown in from Utah to witness it.

 

“He just sat at the bottom of the hill and sobbed,” said his mother, Kathryn Carlin. “As everybody left the mountain, he skied over to his dad and I, at the side of the course, and we cried with him.”

 

After a while, Nate said, “I’ve got to get down there,” to the base lodge for the awards ceremony. “We walked, he skied, Mrs. Carlin said, “and when we got to the bottom, there he was, with tears running down his cheeks, signing autographs for kids. It was amazing. That was probably one of my proudest moments, right there. Just that he could still stand up and face everybody. He was devastated. He wasn’t ashamed to shed a tear.”

 

That night, as his mom was driving to Albany, Nate phoned her in a much b etter mood. ”Find that house in Palm Springs,” he said. “Let’s all go to Palm Springs during the Olympics.”

 

Mrs. Carlin secured the rental property and made travel plans for her four children (Nate, his older sister Katie and his two younger half-siblings Megan and Chase). Meanwhile, Nate continued to compete on the World Cup tour where he added a frustrating footnote to his pre-Olympic run.

 

Ten days after the bad luck in Lake Placid, Roberts placed third at an event in the Czech Republic. He earned the podium he was seeking but, of course, it was too late.

 

“Obviously, I wasn’t meant to be at the ‘06 Olympics,” he says now. “I [still] don’t know why.”

 

That February in Palm Springs, between home-cooked meals, raucous ping-pong matches, and a day-trip to Disneyland, he occasionally tuned into the Olympics and saw his teammates finish 3-6-7-9 in men’s moguls, led by Toby Dawson who captured the bronze medal.

“He came to grips with [his situation] quickly,” Mrs. Carlin said. “But that first year after not going to the Olympics, he lost a little fire.”

 

* * *

 

Roberts had skied all his life. He grew up in Park City, Utah, and when he was 5, he had a season’s pass. When the snow fell, there was only one place he wanted to be, and the ski bus stopped right outside his house.

 

At 7, he entered his first moguls competition, and when he was 12, he was already chasing the 1994 Olympian Sean Smith around the mountain, as well as Todd Schirman, who now coaches the US freestyle team.

 

“We all took him under our wing,” Smith said. “He was a quiet kid, but you could see his raw natural ability, great coordination, quick feet, and quick recovery – like a cat. He was agile like a gymnast. He was more comfortable on skis than in tennis shoes.”

 

At the time, young freestyle skiers often competed in more than once discipline and Roberts was no exception. He also did aerials and, every week until he was 12 or 13, he would battle one of his best friends, Jeret Peterson, whom everyone called “Speedy” but Roberts called “Pink Panther” because of his pink jacket. “We pushed each other at such a young age,” Roberts said.

 

After a day of charging hard on the hill, they would often retreat to Nate’s home for dinner. So did another talented new kid, Tanner Hall. In the tight-knit freestyle community, everyone was welcome at Nate’s house and Mrs. Carlin became a confidant to all.

 

“She’s definitely been a mother to a lot of kids that have been around me growing up,” Nate said. “She still brings in my friends who don’t have family around for the holidays.”

 

Eventually, the boys’ paths diverged: Hall became an X Games megastar in free skiing, Peterson recently made his third Olympic team in aerials, and Roberts stuck with moguls.

 

In 2000, when Roberts was 18, he made the US ski team. At 20, he made his World Cup debut. And at 21 – in just his seventh World Cup start – Roberts earned his first victory and became the first moguls skier to throw the “back full” in competition, now known as the “Nate-Dog.”

 

But Roberts was more than just triumphant and innovative that day in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy. He also out-performed the newly-crowned 2002 Olympic moguls champion, Janne Lahtela, and relegated the Finn to second place. Roberts’ victory earned him a spot on the A Team (where he has been ever since). It “absolutely” changed his life, he said “It made me even hungrier to work on my skiing because – who knows what else I could do?”

 

At the 2005 World Championships, Roberts upset the Finns on their home snow to become the first American man to win a world championship title in moguls. It was a monumental achievement, however, the sport that had once been Roberts’ passion suddenly turned into a job.

 

“Right away, it turned into business,” Roberts said. “It meant an agent and TV shows, and I forgot why I was doing this.”

 

So after the shell shock of missing the Olympics, he stepped back and tried to put some joy back into his life.

 

Instead of hammering away in the gym during the summer of 2006, he bought a dirt bike – and promptly crashed it during the warm-up lap of a motocross race in Salt Lake City. The impact knocked him out, separated his shoulder, broke two ribs, and bruised a lung. He sold the bike, re-focused on skiing, and won two World Cup events that year as well as a bronze medal at the 2007 World Championships – but the point was: remember to have fun outside of skiing.

 

Roberts also became a scratch golfer and is so good that “Golf Digest” just ranked him No. 6 on its 2009 list of “Top 150 Athlete Golfers” – even though Roberts had been sidelined last summer with a knee injury that also caused him to miss a full season of skiing.

 

On December 18, 2008, during a training run just before the World Cup season opener in Mirabel, France, Roberts overshot a jump, landed on the flats, and the compression jarred his right knee. He was told it was a bone bruise but the pain was so great that it was tough to roll over in bed.

 

He rested it over Christmas break and tried to make a brave return, saying, “Honestly, it felt better when I was skiing bumps than going up the t-bar. The slightest motion – like your ski getting caught in a rut – would tweak it. But the skiing part was fine. Then again, maybe it was the adrenaline taking over. I don’t know.”

 

An MRI revealed that the bone bruise had been covering up torn cartilage. Roberts went in for a simple arthroscopic procedure, but when he awoke, he learned that micro-fracture surgery had been performed and he would be on crutches for six weeks.

 

He moved back into his mother’s place last February, and began what Mrs. Carlin called “a hell of a long year. When he was on crutches, he would try to fake a backflip in the hallway or he’d fling himself around. Once he was mobile, he didn’t understand that he couldn’t swing a golf club.”

 

“The hardest part for any athlete is taking a step back,” Schirman said, “but I remember it was especially hard for him to take a year off because he’s such a competitor.”

 

Despite intensive rehab for the past year, Roberts still missed several training camps leading up to this season and by October 2009 – he still wasn’t jumping.

 

So on the eve of the World Cup season opener in December – a double-header in Suomo, Finland – Scott Rawles, the head US moguls coach, said he wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.

 

In practice that day, Rawles said, Roberts had just started to show signs that “the old Nate is back,” then added, “I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

 

Three days after that interview, Roberts was on podium.

 

He hadn’t competed in a year, yet he placed third and his scores indicated that he was skiing better than ever.

 

In the past, Roberts was always rewarded highly for his air and speed components, but in three of his four runs in Finland, his turn scores were among the best in the field – “and that’s never happened,” he said. The difference now, he said, is that he finally has full range of motion in his knees and equal strength in each leg. Before surgery, he would favor his strong side and “get into trouble because the weak side [of the turn] would be so quick. Now it’s pretty even, I stay in control, and I’m in better shape from head to toe.”

 

But best of all, he finally met the US Olympic qualifying criteria.

 

At 27, it seems Roberts’ nightmare is over and his dream is just beginning.

 

Aimee Berg is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.

 

Tags: Aimee Berg, Nate Roberts, US Ski Team, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games