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Outside magazine, September 1998

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The Happiest Guy Alive (cont.)

A big deal he is — the biggest star of the moment in freestyle skiing, and on the verge of becoming the biggest star in all of skiing. (Perhaps only Hermann Maier — The Hermanator — and Picabo Street are in his class in terms of wide-breakout popularity.) Jonny was the first skier to cross over the street-styles of skateboarding and its winter cousin, snowboarding, into big-time competitive skiing. The crowd-pleasing 360 mute grab air that won him the Olympics, for instance, was a move lifted from snowboarding. These ingredients make him a marketer's dream. "Right now there aren't too many people who aren't interested in Jonny," says Tim Vetter, Jonny's agent with Action Sports Management. "With him, it's not a matter of worrying about where the next deal is coming from; it's a matter of choosing the deal that's the most fun for Jonny."

So far, besides his sponsorship arrangements through the U.S. Ski Team and his gear sponsors — K2 skis and Tecnica boots, among others — he is also affiliated with American Skiing Company, owner and operator of nine resorts nationwide. ("I think you have to go back to Jean-Claude Killy to find someone comparable," gushes Skip King, American Skiing Company's vice-president of communications.) And Jonny is working on a deal with Polo Sport — a significant step, since it would be his first nonskiing-related mass-market endorsement.

The funny thing is, as you tour Muffin Land with Jonny, you begin to wonder how his life would have been any different if he had not won the gold medal. What if he were just Jonny Moseley, non-gold-medal-winning skier? What if he weren't a professional skier at all but just a ski bum — would he still be the Muffin Man?

"Some things have changed, there's no question about it," Jonny says of life after the medal. "I mean my time is more valuable. My personal time is more valuable to me, and my time is more valuable to other people. But as far as the basic flavor, my life didn't change that much. I mean, I was loving life before and I'm loving life even more now.

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I've always been lucky, I mean, really lucky. It's all good. It's all so good I don't even like to think about how good it is. So let's stop talking about it. 'Cause if you talk about it and then figure out why it's so good, then from that moment it probably won't be good anymore. Like, if you have to think about it too much, how good can it be?"

But what is it actually like to be this successful at this young age?

"It feels great! I'm lucky, because I'm 23 and now I have the rest of my life to run with it, to do whatever I want. And that's an awesome feeling. I knew the minute I crossed the line [at the Olympics], this just put everything together. What else can I say? But believe me, not a second goes by that I don't remind myself: I'm really lucky."

"People don't realize what kind of position you put yourself in on the day you decide you're not going to do the normal life and you're going to try to win an Olympic gold medal. At one point, it's like, wow, that's a noble goal. But on the other hand, when you're 17 or 18, you're putting yourself in the position of total satisfaction or total destruction. From where I come from to what I've done — I'm really, really lucky."

Having abandoned the flat tire for lack of an air tank, Jonny has moved on to his next round of preparations for the weekend bash he is planning on the family's Tinsley Island houseboat for himself and 30 or so members of his posse. Sitting legs akimbo in whalebone corduroy cargo pants on the oil-slicked asphalt, he hunches over a soldering iron as he rewires a boat-trailer brake light. It is hard work, brutal on the back, and it is currently being made even more difficult by his mother, who has called from Virginia, where she is visiting Jonny's grandmother. He cradles the phone in the crook of his neck, assuring his mother that the upcoming party will not get out of control. He promises her that the two houseboats he has arranged and the numerous gallons of vodka and kegs of beer and speedboats and jet skis and wakeboards won't combine into a sort of high-octane aquatic cocktail that will leave Jonny's reputation tattered, psyche shattered, and guts splattered.

"No problem, it's gonna be OK," Jonny says as he touches the iron to the resinous solder. "Like 20 people — 25 tops. You want the whole list? OK. Trevor and Josh and Beau and Mark and Toffee and Arman and ... oh, fuck!"

The brake light Jonny has just connected isn't working. It just sits there, unblinking, a dull candy-red tribute to Jonny's inability to solder and talk on the phone at the same time. He says good-bye to his mother, who has passed the phone to Nana, his 85-year-old grandmother. "Hi, Nana. How are you?"

A few minutes later the cell phone rings again and it's Hathaway Pogue, an assistant to Dana Davis, daughter of billionaire Marvin Davis, and she's calling to ask if Jonny will participate in a charity auction. ("Next Item: A Ski Date with Gold Medal Winner Jonny 'Big Air' Moseley.")

And then Jeff, his 29-year-old brother, comes over and tells Jonny he's doing a suckass job with the soldering, and then Jonny's father stops by to agree and tell Jonny he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and how could a pantywaist job like this be taking this many hours, and Jonny tells his father it's because every passing car is filled with people who want to stop and talk to him and take his picture. And then, as if on cue, an elderly neighbor tentatively makes her way across the narrow lawn between sidewalk and street and asks Jonny if he would pose for a picture, "For my wee grandcousins in Ireland. They watched you win the gold on the Olympics and they love you, Jonny."

And Jonny stands and puts his arm around the old lady and flashes a hang-loose gesture at the camera and the brake light still isn't fucking working. And then the UPS lady shows up like she shows up every day with crates of ski parkas and Jonny Moseley posters and boxes of fan mail. Today she also has a special box, one that's smaller than the rest, from the U.S. Olympic Committee, and Jonny rips it open and pulls out an immense gold ring the size of a plum and slips it over his index finger. There are dozens of diamonds outlining the five-ringed Olympic symbol, and lettering saying "Gold Medal Winner 1998" along the sides. Jonny shakes his head. "I ordered the smallest ring they had when I got to Nagano," he says, "because I didn't know if I was gonna win. I guess they upgraded me."

And he tries to slip the ring off, but it's stuck. And the brake light still has to be fixed because it is on the back of the trailer that's hauling one of the speedboats up to Tinsley for this phat weekend that Jonny has been planning, like, since the minute he finished that Nagano gold medal run. And Jonny is filthy with brake fluid and soot, and his Kappa shirt is streaked black, and he realizes he's crossed the taillight wires and has to clip and resolder them. And Jeff cracks up: "One thing you can definitely say about Jonny: He's keeping it real."

And then his dad comes back. He's found the air tank.

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