It’s sounds like Bohonnon might be a cat reincarnated, always landing on his feet.īohonnon’s fifth place finish in Sochi is remarkable for an athlete who wasn’t even expected to make the team. “He makes everything look easy,” said Davies. He landed not just one but six over the course of the week.
#National geographic mind meld mac
Dizzy yet?Īs Davies told me, “No one lands the first full-double-full-full they try.” Unless you’re Mac Bohonnon, that is. It’s a quadruple twisting triple-meaning three flips and four twists-completed in mere seconds. The pinnacle was a full-double-full-full, one of the biggest tricks on the World Cup circuit. In Sochi, mental focus helped Bohonnon pull out two jumps he’d never tried in competition, which is unheard of, according to Davies. It comes down to visualization: Envisioning success, eliminating negative thoughts, practicing relaxation techniques, putting mind over matter. “It’s a mental difference.”īohonnon agrees, saying the mental side is 50 to 60 percent of the sport. “In the top ten, there’s not much of an athletic difference,” said Bohonnon’s coach, Joe Davies. But the wonder kid bounced back, landing jump after crazy jump. It turns out the injuries were more mental than physical, sapping his confidence. As he described the experience to me, Bohonnon visibly tensed, still scarred by the memory. During training in Sochi, Bohonnon took the worst fall of his life, which landed him in the hospital, coughing up blood. Recovering your mental game after a crash is no easy feat, as Bohonnon attests. Bad conditions, a crash, even seeing someone else fall can get into an athlete’s head, planting seeds of doubt. Who wouldn’t be afraid? One mishap-a botched launch, an arm slightly askew, an unexpected tailwind-can have disastrous consequences. “The scariest thing is doing something on snow for the first time.” “There’s no middle ground between water and snow,” Bohonnon told me. It turns out, the biggest deterrent is fear. Watching it is mind-boggling: It’s hard to conceive of how anyone can learn to perform such stunts. No doubt this determination and resilience has contributed to Bohonnon’s rise to the upper echelons of an unbelievably challenging sport. Rather than let the coach kick him off the team, Bohonnon dedicated himself to correcting his form. He’s very familiar with overcoming mental hurdles in order to compete-like early in his career when a coach told Bohonnon he wasn’t good enough and should give up the sport. He left home at the age of 13 to train at Olympic facilities-first in Lake Placid, New York, and now in Park City, Utah. This wasn’t the first time Bohonnon has had to dig deep. But he already has half a decade of experience and comes across as far wiser than his years. He pulled through, placing 5th in the men’s aerials, proving he’ll be a flying force for years to come.Īt just 18, Bohonnon is on the young side of aerial skiers, who typically peak in their late 20s. He could either let the pressure get to his head, or use his mind to overcome it. It was do or die time for the young athlete.
He’d have to nail a more difficult jump than he’d ever attempted on snow. Olympic team, he knew he’d need to come up with some big tricks in order to be competitive on the global stage in Sochi. So when Bohonnon secured a last-minute spot on the U.S. They train first on trampolines and then jump into water pits dozens of times before ever attempting a trick on snow. Skiers bomb down a ramp at 40+ miles an hour, launch 50 feet into the air, and perform multiple flips and twists before landing on a steep slope. “It takes a special person to think it’s a good idea to do what we do,” says 18-year-old freestyle aerialist Mac Bohonnon. Aerial skiing is inherently dangerous.
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