U.S. Freestyle Ski Team aerialist Emily Cook hasn't had the best Olympic experiences. After making the 2002 team, she severely broke both her feet while training just two weeks before the opening ceremony, and was forced to watch the Games in a wheelchair. While there was some serious doubt as to whether she would ever ski again following the injury, Cook made it all the way back to the 2006 Games, but finished in 19th place.
Now, the 30-year-old native of Boston is gearing up for what could be her final Olympic Games, and strongly believes that her previous obstacles have fully prepared her for a medal run in 2010. FanHouse spoke to Cook about overcoming her career-threatening injury and what she needs to do to break the U.S. women's 12-year medal drought. The full interview is below.
Ariel Helwani: Do you know how many days are left until the opening ceremonies?
Emily Cook: I believe we are at about 4 months and 11 days.
So you're not counting, right?
(Laughs) No, not at all. I might be off by a day or two, but we're definitely a little bit less than four and a half months away.
As we approach the start of the Games, what are the emotions going through your body?
For me, my biggest focus is really to just take every day one day at a time, and every jump and every skill one day at a time. For me, that is the easiest way to deal with it. There are a couple of milestones that make it exciting: the World Championships were really exciting last year; the first snow started flying last week in Utah, so that was really exciting. It's really just about ... we set out a plan four years ago, after the Turin Olympics, just making sure that I knew exactly what I had to do in order to be where I wanted to be in February of 2010. And it's a matter of just sticking to that plan every day. It's just making sure that it's slow and steady and consistent, and that everything's getting done every day.
Your two Olympic experiences haven't been career highlights; do you still harp on those moments a lot?
Definitely not. The 2002 injury and also the 2006 Games, they were both, obviously, huge parts of who I am today and huge parts of my life. I would never trade them for the world. In 2002, the three years that I spent rehabbing my two broken feet, I learned more about myself as a human being and as an athlete than I ever could have had if things gone perfectly smoothly. So for me, being injured in 2002 and watching from the stands in a wheelchair, it made me appreciate being able to be an athlete so much more. And it also gave me the opportunity to really choose to be an athlete, because I spent three years not being an athlete, and I realized how much I love it and how much I wanted it.
So 2006, that was all about participating for me. It was about getting there, it was about walking in the opening ceremonies, it was about sharing the experience with my teammates. And of course, because I didn't perform quite as well as I wanted to -- I actually crashed my first jump out in the 2006 Olympics -- I realized when I stood up and looked around after I brushed all the snow off myself, my friends and family were cheering like I had just won a gold medal. And it really put it in perspective for me that for the last four years, since 2002, my dream had been to go to Olympics, to participate, to be an Olympian, you know, in mind, spirit, and this time in body. This time around, things are a little different for me. I've had the opportunity to prepare properly over the last four years, and to do absolutely everything in my power to perform my best next February. So I'm really excited going into these Games. The first time was about qualifying, the second time was about participating, and this time is about performing. So I'm really excited to go do that.
Was there really a doubt that you would never walk again after the 2002 injury?
No. You know, I think everyone was pretty confident that I would walk. The problem was that about a year and a half after the injury, I wasn't walking well. Actually, if you lined up my hip and my knee, my left foot actually pointed out at a 45-degree angle. So I was walking, I was just limping and I was in pain almost all the time. So that second surgery that I had a year and a half after the injury was, you know, I did it with the hope, of course, that I would be able to ski again, that I would be able to jump again, and that I would be able to compete again, but there was really no guarantee that any of that would happen. So really it was about getting back to normal life functioning, and always in the forefront of my mind was getting back to competition and getting back to being an Olympian again. But there weren't any doctors out there that guaranteed that they could get me back up for sure.
I read that your left foot went from a size 6 to a size 2 when you the injury occurred. Was that permanently or just when you broke your feet?
Just when I actually broke it. The thing was that there was a really severe dislocation in the foot, so what happened was that all of the bone just kind of squashed together. My foot actually turned kind of sideways, so that the bottom part was bent on the side instead of down, and it just kind of just shrunk back too. So the bone kind of ... it kind of collapsed up, almost. Like if you see pictures of women who've had their feet bound, back in China, it kind of looked like that. It just kind of shrunk a little bit and twisted sideways. It was pretty disgusting (laughs). Yeah, it was kind of gross actually. It was actually about that point that I definitely kind of went into shock and lost consciousness a little bit during the whole actual process of breaking the feet. Once they reduced the dislocation, it went back to its normal size. It looks different than the other one now, but it's definitely no longer a size 2 (laughs).
Seven years later, how tired are you of talking about that day?
You know, like said since the beginning, it's such a huge part of my life. It's such a huge part of who I am and who I've become as a human being that it's really not a problem for me to talk about anymore. It doesn't upset me anymore. I'm very much past the injury part of life. I've moved forward; I've conquered all the fear that came along with it: fear of re-injury, fear of failure, all of those things that come along with any sort of devastating experience in life. And really, I've had so many more experiences now that have shown me that really in the big scheme of things, yeah, it was terrible that I didn't go to the Olympics, but I have a really incredible, amazing life, and the opportunity to share that with a lot of people. So I'm totally game to talk about it as much as I can, as much as people want to. I know that it inspires other people to come back from injuries themselves and overcome their own obstacles. There are many people in my life who do that for me, as well. So I think the more you talk about it, the more you share the experiences that you have in your life, the better off everybody ends off. So I'm cool with it, it's not a big deal.
Do you still use the techniques that you learned in diving and gymnastics when you are competing on the ski hill?
Absolutely. I think the biggest advantage to being a gymnast before being an aerialist is really just your body awareness and your air sense. Often times as an aerialist, our goal is to keep our eyes down the hill and looking at the ground at all times, and sometimes you just miss and you don't. So for me, flipping and twisting is so natural that if I happen to take a look in the wrong place, a lot of people in that situation would get lost and not exactly know where they were in the air. For me, it's really easy to get my feet underneath me and ski away. That's actually one of my strengths as an athlete, is to land jumps no matter what happens, which is great. But also, just being that competitive athlete at such a young age, I learned a lot of things about sport psychology, about how to be a competitor, about how to relax my mind going into a competition, and all of those important things that come along with being an athlete for so long.
I actually had a really cool experience [recently]. I was at the Women's Sports Foundation, the Annual Salute to Women in Sports event, and had the opportunity to meet Dominique Dawes, Kerri Strug and Shawn Johnson was there. So really just to meet some of the girls that ... Dominique and Kerri, who I watched when I was younger growing up, and who really inspired me to be an athlete. And then, of course, I'm just an Olympic addict; so just to watch Shawn Johnson compete this summer was amazing also. I love gymnastics; I love watching it. We still do a little bit of it for training, we do a lot of trampoline work, and we'll go in the gym and tumble a little bit, and just make sure we're as comfortable as possible upside down.
The aerial competition became an official medal event at the 1994 games. Almost 16 years later, do you think it gets the respect it deserves from the Olympic community because it's not a traditional Olympic sport?
Yeah. Everyone that I talk to thinks it's the coolest thing in the world. I think it gets a ton of respect. In regards to attention, I don't really know, it's not really why I do it. You know, I do it because I love it. I don't know, I don't really think that question is necessarily something that's too big of a deal for me.
Everyone has their preferences, you know. I love watching gymnastics; someone else loves watching swimming. So I just hope that people have a great time when they watch our sport. It's exciting; it's a huge adrenaline rush, I think, just to even watch it live or on TV.
What's it like being an American Olympian at the Games? Are you well received by the other nations?I don't know if it's a matter of our sport, or just being a Winter Olympian, the Olympics are an opportunity for all of us to get together and celebrate. I don't want to sound all cliché about it, but I love my competitors from overseas. I'm great friends with the Chinese girls, who are some of my biggest competitors, and with the Aussies. I think we're well received everywhere just because of our individual personalities and all of that. I think we'll be very well received in Canada. I love Vancouver. And my family and friends are going to be up there cheering me down the slopes. It's almost like having a home country Olympics, just a little closer to the North.
So, you never receive any backlash given these tense political times?
No, not at all. We're all very close. The thing is about our sport is that we're always in such challenging situations together that we're just always out there helping each other out. And I think that's just a wonderful thing about the Olympics.
An American woman hasn't won a medal in the aerials since Nikki Stone won the gold in 1998. Do you think that drought will end in 2010?
I would absolutely love to see it. Every year my results have been getting better. I've been on the world cup podium a lot, you know, competing against the same women that I will be competing against next year. So I would absolutely be honored to follow in Nikki Stone's footsteps, and bring home a medal next year.
Are you feeling 100% healthy right now?
Yeah, absolutely, I'm healthy. The biggest thing is that the only thing any of us control is our own performance, so I'm just doing everything in my power every day in order to ensure that my performance is going to be the best. I can't control what the other girls are going to do out there, but I can control going out there and performing to the best of my ability. And at this point in my career, I feel like that could potentially be enough. So I'm definitely excited to go out there and do my best two jumps and see what I come away with.
How many more Olympic Games would you like to compete in?
Most likely, this will be my last Olympic Games. I'm definitely not officially announcing that, but I'm 30 years old now, and there are a lot of other amazing things to do in life. We'll have a World Championships in my hometown next year, so we'll see. I may stick around for that. But it's always a matter of whether you're healthy, whether you're happy, having a fun time, and that's something that I'll assess when this Olympics are over. For me right now, it's hard to think past today, never mind past four and a half months from now.
What would you like to do once you retire?
I'm not positive yet. I would definitely love to stay around the athletic field. I love sports. I love the opportunity that it provides especially for young people. So I'd like to stay involved in sport in some capacity. I'm a mass comm. major right now at the University of Utah. I'm a junior, and I'm very slowly chipping away. I'll just probably finish up my education right away and then move forward from there.
Finally, tell to me about what you're doing with Uniqlo?
Uniqlo is an awesome company; I'm so excited to be involved with them right now. What I am is their official Heat Tech Ambassador. They just know that as a winter athlete, I travel to all of these freezing cold places, so their Heat Tech line is a really thin, soft, smooth kind of layering piece. But it's a fashion piece, so it's not meant to be underneath everything, it's meant to be seen. I'm actually wearing one right now. It's incredibly comfortable and it's really warm. It traps the heat inside the material. It's a material designed by one of the largest Japanese fabric companies, Toray. So it's very unique, and comes in tons of colors, and it's very cost-efficient, just around 15 dollars to 20 dollars. So I'm really excited to be with them, and I'm excited that they're going keep me warm on tour while running around the night before a competition, or anything like that.
