It was right around this time four years ago, and Mikael Kingsbury was sitting in a McDonald’s at the bottom of a mountain in Sochi, Russia, an Olympic silver medal draped around his neck. He didn’t want a cheeseburger. It was too early in the day.
Fewer than 48 hours before, Kingsbury had made his Olympic debut, and he’d been part of a Canadian 1-2 finish in moguls along with fellow Quebecer, Alex Bilodeau. Kingsbury was pretty happy with the result, even though a small mistake in his final run cost him gold.
“Sharing [the podium] with my teammate, it was pretty cool,” he said then. “But I’ll do everything I need to do to get that gold next time.”
Well, that next time is now. The men’s moguls final goes Feb. 12 and Kingsbury is the overwhelming favourite to come out on top.
There are a ton of intangibles at play at the Olympics, of course, like pressure and weather and health, but if you were to bet on any Canadian to win in Pyeongchang, the 25-year-old from Deux-Mongagnes is the closest thing to a shoo-in. Kingsbury has been the picture of consistency this season, stringing together seven straight world cup wins before a second-place finish in Mont Tremblant at the last stop before the Olympics. And it’s not just this season that Kingsbury has been dominant: No moguls skier in history has won more international titles.
Just don’t ask him how he does it.
“I don’t know,” he said, during an interview in Calgary earlier this season. “There’s no secret. A lot of people ask me that question. I have fun with what I do, and I care a lot—I give my best all the time.”
Kingsbury’s strength lies not only in his athleticism, but in is his preparation. He’ll study the course and make notes, and he’ll draw it once he gets back to his hotel. “Then I figure out the run I want to do the first day, and I try to do it a couple times in a row in training,” he explained. “When I arrive to compete, I just go copy-paste of what I’ve trained. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
It usually works. Kingsbury has won the Crystal Globe as the top overall skier on the moguls circuit the last six seasons in a row. That’s plain ridiculous. The two-time world champion is missing just one major piece of hardware from his extensive collection. And though he’s made winning look easy, he cautions that it never is, and especially at a pressure-cooker like the Winter Games.
“I have to ski at my best, I have to be on the edge,” he said. “I have to take some risks to win.”
He pushed it four years ago in Sochi, and it resulted in a silver medal. But Kingsbury says he’s a different skier today and that the experience in 2014 taught him a lot about how to deal with pressure.
“Growing up, I always wanted to go to the Olympics and I got there and I was like a kid in Walt Disney, overwhelmed about everything,” he said. “Now I feel like a much more mature skier, a better skier.”
In other words, everything has gone according to plan. Four years ago, sitting in that Russian McDonald’s with that silver medal around his neck, Kingsbury called it. “I’m 21, it’s my first Games,” he said, then. “I know I’m not at my peak. I’m not at my peak at all.
“I think [at] the next Games I’ll be better. Every single way, I’ll be a better athlete. I’m looking forward to my next chance.”
That day has finally come.
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