Athlete profile: Eric Bergoust

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

Athlete notes

"There is a perfect flight in the sport of aerials," says "Bergey," the aerial scientist. "It's physics, it's all about the mechanics, and that's what I am going for, not a World Cup win, but to be the best aerialist ever by making scientifically perfect jumps"...the 1997 world silver medalist studies anything that flies or rotates...juggling may be one of his hobbies but he takes a scientific approach - carefully studying the rotation...before he throws paper trash into the garbage can, he folds or rolls it into different shapes, so he can learn from the resultant flight line..."I guess you can say I'm obsessed with this," laughs Bergoust...he checks his physics by watching hours and hours of videotapes of his jumps -- often four hours in a day...at night, he carries a video camera to his bed, and watches the video on the small screen to analyze his form before going to sleep...as a child growing up among the mountains of Montana, Bergoust was not sure if he wanted to become a pilot, skier, or an acrobat...since his early teens, Bergoust and his brothers had been launching themselves off the family's chimney into the mattresses on the ground..."From the start of my memories, I was a kid who loved the rush," remembers Bergoust, who would discover aerials on TV in 1985...soon the 13-year-old Bergoust was building hand-made, snow-kickers out of bounds at the local ski area..."I've never been so scared as when I was out jumping on my own," says Bergoust. "I was taking what I thought was huge air and didn't know what I was doing. I knew I could get hurt but I wanted to learn. Nothing since then has come that close to scaring me"...his father Don and older brother Todd realized young Eric's passion and helped in the security issue...Don made sure there was plenty of snow on which to land while Todd helped video taping his brother's jumps..."We tried to keep conditions so they'd stick in the snow like an arrow if they ended up on the wrong end," Todd remembers...it actually happened at least once as an early tape shows Eric landing headfirst after an attempted flip...Todd was a mentor who told Eric, "`Don't' just get in there to win, if you are going to do it, do it to be the greatest of all time'"...after putting "some serious miles" on the family car driving to regional level competitions, Bergoust was invited to the Lake Placid kicker in the summer of 1988, where he was living in a car for two weeks before he was granted a spot on the team and a room...by then he had seen the top-ranked aerialists first hand at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, when the sport was included in the Olympics for the first time as an exhibition...Bergoust was the first through the gate as a spectator...after recording his first World Cup win in 1992, Bergoust came out of the shadow of the '95 world champion Trace "the Ace" Worthington when he grabbed three World Cup victories in the 1996 season...in 1997, Bergoust's plan to further solidify his place in the top ranks was severely challenged when he broke right collarbone in five places in a practice accident midway through the season...now Bergoust has a patched-up shoulder as surgeons were required to place a metal plate, screws and cadaver bones in order to give it enough strength...with the World Championships in Nagano approaching in four weeks, the doctors told Bergoust the season was over...ever determined, Bergoust argued and made the doctors cut the rehab time into a half -- eight weeks, still not fast enough for him to compete in the Worlds...then Bergoust and trainer Kim Nelson stormed into the "secret rehab" mission at the training room in the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs..."We designed a program that will give my shoulder just enough movement to do aerials, it didn't have to be able to do anything else," says Bergoust. "Aerials does not require a full movement of arms, I didn't have to be able to raise my arms straight up or something"...the result was the sliver medal at Iizuna Kogen, Nagano, where the Olympic freestyle events will be hosted...Nelson called this achievement "truly remarkable"...now healthy, Bergoust won the second day of the first World Cup held south of the equator in Australia this summer...traditionally, even numbered years had been Bergoust's best seasons (odd numbered years are full of injuries)...if that hold true in February, Nagano might be where Bergoust performs the "perfect jump"...he will concentrate on perfecting his two quad-maneuver jumps toward Nagano, although he wants to work on five-twist jumps in the future...Bergoust got his scientific/mathematical mind from his father Don, who is an engineer, and his brother Todd, who is a drafter...Eric's younger brothers Dan and Arlan are also aerialists...Bergoust's mother Carol and other family members still live in Missoula...