US aerial skier Winter Vinecki takes winding road to Olympic debut

Part of USA TODAY's 10 to watch series profiling some of America's top athletes competing at the Beijing Olympics

A little more than a decade ago, a 12-year-old triathlete named Winter Vinecki walked onto a stage in New York City to accept an award from the Women's Sports Foundation. Billie Jean King, Michelle Kwan and Maya Moore were among the iconic female sports figures in the audience that night. Annika Sorenstam presented the award.

If Vinecki was nervous, she certainly didn't show it, one attendee said.

"She had the entire room riveted. In tears. And behind her, cheering her on," Emily Cook recalled.

It was after that 2011 event that Cook, an Olympic freestyle skier, first introduced herself to Vinecki – and first introduced that pre-teen triathlete to a discipline of skiing called aerials. It was a chance encounter that essentially shifted the course of Vinecki's life.

"And lo and behold," Cook said, "here she is."

Today, Vinecki is an Olympic athlete in the skiing event that she discovered almost at random, all those years ago. The now 23-year-old is one of four women who will represent Team USA in aerial skiing at the 2022 Winter Olympics, with competition in her event set to start Feb. 13. (She also might be selected for the mixed-gender aerial team, which competes Feb. 10.)

According to Olympedia.org, she will also be the first athlete named "Winter" to ever compete at the Winter Games.

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For Vinecki, becoming an Olympian is just the latest milestone in a bustling, do-it-all kind of life. It's featured marathons on every continent with her mom, speaking engagements, a nonprofit in her name, a move away from home, World Cup podiums, remote schoolwork and multiple serious injuries – including a broken face.

"I'm just really looking forward to standing on top of that hill and knowing I had done the work I needed to do to get there, no matter what all the other circumstances are," Vinecki said in a January interview.

"I'm just excited to do what I do best: Go out there and do some flips and twists."

A big move

Vinecki wasn't always big on flipping and twisting, mind you. While the acrobatics are at the core of aerials, in which athletes launch off a ramp and 40 feet into the air, they didn't come naturally to her at first.

"I think the most I had done is maybe a front flip or back flip on a backyard trampoline, with my mom holding the back of my shirt," she said.

Vinecki grew up about three hours north of Detroit, in the small town of Gaylord, Michigan. She started racing in triathlons at 5 and learned skiing from her grandpa, a ski instructor in a nearby resort town.

Then, at 9, her life started to change. Vinecki lost her father, Michael, to an aggressive form of prostate cancer. She decided to found a nonprofit in his memory, Team Winter, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The family moved to Oregon. And then, in the midst of it all, Vinecki met Cook.

Impressed by Vinecki's passion and courage during a speech she gave at the Women's Sports Foundation event, Cook approached the 12-year-old and her mother, Dawn Estelle, after the ceremony to introduce herself. She told them that if Vinecki liked regular skiing, she might also enjoy a different discipline of the sport: aerials.

"I was like, 'I don't even know what that is,'" Vinecki said, "'but sure, I'm down to try it.'"

Cook invited Vinecki to stay with her in Park City, Utah the following summer and try jumping off ramps into a pool of water. ("How could I say no?" Vinecki said.) She quickly found herself drawn to the sensation of flying, even on mini jumps, getting just one or two feet of air.

"She was for sure nervous, but Winter has always had this quiet determination," Cook said. "She got this serious face on her ... and got it done."

Shortly thereafter, Vinecki made up her mind: She wanted to leave her family, move to Utah and start training to become a world-class aerial skier. It was a major life decision, especially for a 13-year-old. But it didn't come as a surprise to her mom.

"It never even crossed my mind not to let her go, because I knew when she was really young that the Olympics were in her sights," Estelle said. "So when this opportunity came about, it wasn’t even a second thought. It was 'OK, we just need to find somebody to live with.'"

Vinecki stayed with coaches at first, then a host family she had met through her triathlon racing. Her lifestyle soon began to revolve around training. She traded traditional schooling for online courses through Stanford University starting in eighth grade, for instance, and missed out on many normal teenage milestones – while adding a few of her own.

In 2013, Vinecki set a world record by becoming the youngest runner to complete a marathon on all seven continents, with the last race coming in Athens before her 15th birthday.

"She’s a perfectionist," Estelle said. "And she’s good at a lot of things. I don’t know many people that can pull off everything like she does."

'I literally punched myself'

Moving away from home at 13 wasn't always easy, however.

Vinecki said her first year in Park City was new and exciting, but by Year 2, she was coping with bouts of homesickness. She spent hours every day on FaceTime with her brothers, trying to stay connected. But during one trip home, she still found herself wondering if the solitary nature of training was worth it.

"I remember crying in my closet with my mom," she said. "I was like, 'I don't know if I can go back.' "

Estelle encouraged her to give it one more try, to stay for a week and see how she felt. Vinecki never turned back. By 16, she was named to the U.S. Ski Team. And by 18, she had won a silver medal at the junior world championships.

"What I saw in her was a very determined young woman who could accomplish anything that she put her mind to," said Cook, who went on to coach Vinecki from 2017 to 2019.

"Our sport's not quick. ... It’s a lot of hours. It’s a lot of planning and sticking with the plan. It’s a lot of walking up and down stairs and doing jump after jump after jump. It’s a very exhausting process."

For Vinecki, it was all supposed to culminate at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. But then injuries hit.

In August 2017, Vinecki fractured the right side of her face while jumping into a pool toward the end of her summer training program. She was attempting a new trick when her hands strayed too far out from her body, crashing into the water right in front of her face. "I literally punched myself in the face," she explained.

Vinecki had two titanium plates put in and returned to jumping within weeks. With one month until Pyeongchang, she said she still had a strong chance of making the Olympic team, before a torn anterior cruciate ligament in competition ended that dream. She watched the 2018 Games from her couch in Park City with her knee wrapped in ice.

"There were a lot of tears," Estelle said.

Vinecki returned to competition the following winter, with her sights already set on 2022. She had two normal seasons of training and competition before COVID-19 hit.

"It's challenging because you have all these expectations of what your first Olympics is going to be like. And now it's none of that," Vinecki said.

Cook, though, believes that if anyone can handle the uncertainty and stress of Olympics during a global pandemic, it's Vinecki – the girl who was captivating a room of sports legends before her 13th birthday.

"Her focus is really unwavering," Cook said. "Everyone on a different day can do the best jump in the world. ... It takes doing it at the right time. And what she brings to it is that ability to focus through whatever challenges she’s facing on that day, on that hill."

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Winter Vinecki, US Olympic aerial skier, was star runner