Athlete profile: Veronica Brenner

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

She was the top-ranked freestyle in the world in 1997, but Brenner is a self-described perfectionist..."I really think I'm terrible," says Brenner. "I'm a perfectionist and when I see myself jumping, I see all of the bad things. The more I learn, the worse I think I am because I keep finding more things to fix. When I look at myself (on videotape), I just cringe"...in only three full seasons on the World Cup circuit -- she competed in only six events in 1994 -- Brenner has posted consisted year-long results in order to place 10th, second, and first in the overall World Cup standings...still, she is far from satisfied with her development..."I am not content just to win stuff," she says. "I'm really trying to jump the way I know I should. Wanting to be perfect is what makes me want to jump"...Brenner prides herself more on eliminating every flaw in her form, from takeoff until landing, rather than trying to perform eye-popping tricks..."I like to make one move as perfect as possible before adding a new one," she explains. "I like to upgrade (the degree of difficulty in her routine) slowly"...that approach may have cost Brenner at the 1997 Worlds in Nagano, where she lacked a sufficiently difficult arsenal of jumps to compete with Australian Kirstie Marshall and her full-double-full..."I was a little disappointed about Worlds," reflects Brenner. "I went there to win but I felt that there was no chance because Kirstie's scores were so high. But when I think about I jumped fairly close to my potential -- my goal was to score a 176 and I did, which was my personal best"...to prepare for the Olympics, Brenner did learn the full-double full this past summer -- "I did about five or 10 per day," she says. "At first I was really nervous about it but now I can sleep nights"...Brenner's appearance in Nagano will fulfill a lifelong dream..."Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated by the Olympics," says Brenner. "I always had the idea in my head even though I didn't know what sport I would do it in. I tried every single sport and would keep changing until I found what was right"...like teammate Caroline Olivier, Brenner even did gymnastics -- "I was obviously never as good as Caroline. I just grew," says the now-5'8" Brenner, who did practice competitive gymnastics for seven years as a child...still, despite her own expectations, she refuses to place too much pressure on herself to perform well at Nagano..."I try to downplay things a lot so if I do really badly I'll think it's not such a big deal," admits Brenner. "But I'm pretty sure there's more to my life than winning a medal"...Brenner is considered to have arguably the best landing among the women's aerialists...according to Olivier, "Veronica gets 3.0 and I'll get a 2.8 on the landing and that's 30 percent of the score"...Brenner hesitantly agrees when asked about her biggest strength -- "Probably my landings" -- but also notes, rather modestly, that the judging might be skewed in favor of solid landers like herself...says Brenner: "It helps that you can jump badly and land well and still get a good score. Somehow the judges think that if you land a jump, your actual jump was somehow better than it really might have been"...not surprisingly, she lists a multitude of small points that she would like to improve, now that she has already upgraded her DD [degree of difficulty]..."You know, there are just so many," she says in reference to her weaknesses. "I need to get straighter coming off the jump. I need to be tighter. Getting higher would be nice too. I also need to get more efficient -- there's a physics to jumping but I kind of make up my own"...Brenner learned to ski with her family at a young age..."When I was about three and a half, my parents were looking for something the whole family could do together," explains Brenner, whose parents are small-scale developers. "So they joined a club -- it was a lot cheaper back then than it is now -- and we skied every weekend"...she competed as a ski racer for a few years, but in 1988, a friend encouraged her to try freestyle - an idea she resisted for almost a year..."I was around 13 and this friend wanted me to do try freestyle," says Brenner. "There's this big rivalry between alpine skiers and freestylers. The alpine skiers call the freestylers ‘fluffs' and the freestylers call the skiers ‘bubbleheads' because of their masks. I was afraid to start because I didn't want to be known as a ‘fluff'"...the alpine-freestyle rivalry still continues in a sense, as the freestyle team travels without many of the frills enjoyed by their alpine counterparts..."I guess you could say we're living a lot of people's dreams -- travelling around and skiing all the time -- but it's not all it's cracked up to be," Brenner says...she went to her first competition as a ballet and a moguls freestyle skier but was forced into trying aerials..."They cancelled the moguls competition and turned it into a double aerials competition," she recalls. "I could only do the jumps from moguls -- spreads, twists, and daffies. But I saw Andy Capicik and his brother Dennis (current members of the Canadian national team) and they were doing inverted flips. I thought that was just the coolest thing I had ever seen and said to myself, ‘I'm going to learn how to do that'"...she performed her aerial jumps off only a water ramp for three years...she first did flips on the snow in 1990 and has specialized in aerials since 1994, the first year she entered World Cup events...she is currently studying human kinetics at the University of Guelph through correspondence courses...she has recently picked up some new hobbies, including snowboarding and surfing, and also loves to cook -- "It helps me to relax"...her boyfriend is American aerialist Britt Swartley...