by Reg Seeton
The new Audi documentary Truth in Motion: The
U.S. Ski Team's Road to Vancouver recently aired
on NBC to launch the 2010 Winter Olympics programming
before heading to iTunes
as a free download, with reairings on February
6 on USA Network and Universal Sports on February
8 and February 11. Directed by Brett Morgen, Truth
in Motion: The U.S. Ski Team's Road to Vancouver
chronicles the elite skiers of Team U.S.A. and
their preparations on the training slopes of Portillo,
California and Saas Fee, Switzerland as the men
and women compete to qualify for spots on the
Olympic ski team.
Showcased in Truth in Motion and leading the way for the U.S. Ski Team on the Road to Vancouver are 2006 Olympic Combined gold medalist and 2008 World Cup Giant Slolam champion, Ted Ligety, and four-time Olympian, Sarah Schleper, two U.S. skiers who had very different paths to the 2010 Winter Olympics. As Truth in Motion reveals, Ted Ligety was a near lock to make the U.S. Ski Team but still had to battle both World Cup competition and the challenging ski conditions to secure his 2010 Winter Olympic spot. For Sarah Schleper, the road to Vancouver in Truth in Motion was more about finding her mental game after returning from injury to gain the confidence needed to ski at her true Olympic potential.
With the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver only days away, TheDeadbolt recently hit the Q&A slopes with U.S. Olympic skiers Ted Ligety, Sarah Schleper, and Truth in Motion director Brett Morgen to learn more about the Olympic magic captured in Truth in Motion: The U.S. Ski Team's Road to Vancouver, how Sarah Schleper left her injury in the past to move forward to Vancouver, how both Ted and Sarah find that all important edge on the slopes, and what Brett Morgen learned from filming the U.S. Ski Team ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
THE DEADBOLT: Brett, how did you approach the film to accurately capture the Olympic spirit?
BRETT
MORGEN: It gravitated towards the competition
between Tommy [Ford], Ted [Ligety], and Jake
[Zamansky]. In terms of capturing the Olympic
spirit, I think that with World Cup skiers,
a lot of them were very focused more on the
World Cup when we started shooting than on the
Olympics. I think it's around this time of year
that they really start putting their energy
and focus on it.
One of the things I found really interesting about it was how few of the skiers actually wanted to discuss the Olympics. I don't know if it was kind of like they didn't want to jinx themselves or not. But I think [Scott] Macartney said it to me best when I wrapped an interview with him down there. I said, "Scott, why won't anyone really talk about the Olympics?" And he said, "Well, it's a long season we don't want to get ahead of ourselves." I think Jake might even say it in the film. Their attitude towards the Olympics, for the most part in terms of my questions with him, was if they skied well then they would have a good opportunity to go to the Olympics and all they were really focused on during training was skiing their best. So I think that the film documents what it takes to be the best in your sport and all of the sacrifices that the athletes have to go through to get to that point.
THE DEADBOLT: What were the challenges in matching the visual style with angles on the slopes to the heart and passion?
MORGEN: When you watch ski racing on television, they have about eighteen cameras up on the hill. When you're shooting men and women going 50 to 60 miles per hour, and with downhill up to 80 miles per hour down a two kilometer mountain and you only have three cameras to capture, it's pretty daunting. Not to mention the fact that when we were in Saas Fee, Switzerland, it was with the wind chill minus 20 up on the hill. So our cameras were freezing every three minutes.
We
just approach it very methodically and we would
sort of figure out how many runs the guys and
women would do a day and just constantly move
our cameras up and down the hill to track them.
It's a really difficult sport to capture from
the point of view of the skiers for a number
of reasons. I think if you put a helmet cam
on them, it's just very bumpy and it doesn't
really capture it. Ultimately we found that
we had an incredible ski operator named Tom
Day who has done a bunch of work with Warren
Miller who I just sort of let him take the lead,
to be honest, about the best positions. I shot
most of the non-skiing stuff myself. When I
would try to take a camera myself on the hill,
I would always miss the guys coming around.
It takes a lot of training and we were blessed
to have some amazing ski ops that were able
to capture it.
One of the things that I think the film does successfully, hopefully, is that most filmmakers would be drawn more towards downhill just because of the speed and exhilaration. I personally had never seen a film that was focused solely on GS [Giant Slolam] and I think when you see the film you can really appreciate what these athletes are doing with their bodies. One of our cameras was a Weiss cam that shoots at a thousand frames per second and there were some shots in the film where Ted is, where we ramp up the speed and then slow it down, and you can really see his mechanics and how low he is to the ground. To me it's kind of breathtaking. When you're watching them at full speed it's kind of hard to see the subtle differences if you're not a true expert in the sport. But when you slow it down you can really sort of see the subtle differences between someone like Ted or Jake or Sarah or Tommy Ford.
THE DEADBOLT: Sarah, how do you get to the place where previous injuries don't factor into your mental game when you're training?
SARAH SCHLEPER: It's funny, because I just kind of had an experience like that in this last World Cup I was in. I had been pretty much named to the Olympic team, and that's been the goal for the last two years after coming back, and I kept having thoughts of getting injured going through my head. It's really hard to race and push the limits when you're thinking, "Oh, I just want to get to the Olympics. I just want to get there and not be hurt before then." It's a matter of thinking about other things and still just getting yourself really pumped up and wound up in the start and relaxing and kind of just letting your instincts take over.
But those thoughts do cross your mind, especially after you've had a number of injuries. At this point it's the only thing that would keep me from going to Vancouver. So that's been kind of a battle on these last couple of races, but I got through. I had some fast runs, so now it's just a couple of training runs before Vancouver and then race time and I don't think I'll be worried about getting hurt at Vancouver, because there I am at my goal and I'm going to put it on the line to see what I can do to win. And if that means taking the risk of really hooking a tip, or something like that, just pushing the line so much that something could happen, that's what it's going to take. I'm just going to push it that close to the edge and go for it as best as I can.
THE DEADBOLT: Sarah and Ted, what's the one thing when you're gunning down the hill on race day that can give you that few tenths of a second edge?
TED
LIGETY: For me it's really important when
I'm in the start gate to not be focusing or
thinking about peripheral things [or] about
what happens with the results. I just try to
go down go down the hill. I mean, I have a basic
plan of what I'm going to be doing through the
course. I know the kind of technical sections,
the blind turns, but in between that I'm focused
on how can I go faster. I'm going fast and I'm
already basically at the limit and have my hip
on the snow almost every turn. How can I arc
cleaner for the next turn is the main focus.
So it's just kind of that constant push because I feel like there are sections where everybody is going to ski about the same speed and there are other sections of the course where you can just lay down the gap a little more than the other guys. That's, I think, one of my better abilities, is to step up the speed in those sections where I know I can go that much faster. Just kind of knowing that and not worrying about the consequences of putting in that little extra risk.
SCHLEPER: Yeah. I would add the start is pretty important because you can get a couple of tenths there. It really starts at the starting gate, having a really solid start, giving yourself a really good push to the first gate and getting into a rhythm where you know you're balancing and going as fast as you can while still trying to make all of the sections clean. And that's a lot like what Ted was saying with inspection and looking at it before when you're given the opportunity and seeing how fast can I go without maybe blowing a turn below. Then you got to just keep fighting all of the way to the finish. And if you do have mistakes or you throw it on your hip, get up and keep on charging, because you can still have a fast run out of that, and just throwing your hand through the finish, start to finish.
THE DEADBOLT: Brett, what qualities from the skiers did you walk away with that will stay with you and make you a better filmmaker?
MORGEN:
Like the athletes, I constantly try to challenge
and push myself to be the best I can be on any
given day. I think seeing their dedication and
commitment to their sport is something that
certainly inspired me shooting it and something
I'll always take with me. As a father of three
children, I had a personal connection with what
Sarah was going through and the sacrifices she
had to go through.
Actually, I had a question for Sarah, because I haven't had a chance to speak to her since the season started. Sarah, I was just curious, I think your success this season has taken a lot of people by surprise. I'm wondering how much of your success this year do you contribute to Lasse [your son] and having that extra thing to level you and to come home to and push you a little further. Does that have anything to do with it or is it mechanics? What has sort of elevated your game do you think this season?
SCHLEPER: Well, I think it goes back to what Ted was saying about having expectations and how that can kind of hold you back a little bit. I feel like this year I haven't had a lot of expectations. I mean, it's important for me to get results to go to the Olympics but my expectations are more how am I doing with my family. That's just taken a lot of the pressure off for the races and allowed me to relax and let go and try to go for winning runs and try and ski faster than I was before. So yeah, it has contributed to my success this season.
