Like Billie Jean King Said

The quantification of dominance in a chaotic field like moguls skiing—a sport where gravity is an enemy masquerading as a facilitator—rarely means total saturation. The U.S. women, emerging from the season-opening World Cup events in Ruka, Finland, demonstrated this complex calculus. Though they did not manage to sweep both competitions, the cumulative weight of their performance was undeniable: one victory, four podium finishes, all folded into an imposing eight total top-10 placements. A near-monopoly on high-level success.

Tess Johnson, a Parkite whose intricate downhill lines seem drawn from deeply kinetic geometric principles, claimed the Dec. 7 solo moguls title, securing the apex of the field, while teammate Olivia Giaccio slipped just two steps below to third.

The next day, the internal structure of the team’s success shifted slightly, Giaccio moving up to second place, and Jaelin Kauf taking third. Consider the difficult mathematics confronting these skiers: they are vying for perhaps four Olympic spots, yet six athletes registered in the top seven across the opening weekend, including fellow Parkites Kasey Hogg and Alli Macuga. What perverse optimization algorithm governs a qualification season already truncated by the abrupt erasure of scheduled stops in Idre Fjäll, Sweden, and Bakuriani, Georgia? The difficulty of securing a position on this specific national team rivals the intensity of the World Cup circuit itself.

For Johnson, standing atop that early echelon yielded her first yellow bibs, a garment symbolizing current supremacy, yet requiring constant, grueling defense.

“The biggest honor in the world,” she termed them. This mantle of expectation is often crushing, but Johnson—perhaps channeling the universal athlete attempting to reconcile extreme physical effort with looming, unforgiving stakes—invokes external wisdom. She cites tennis icon Billie Jean King’s definitive mantra: “Pressure is a privilege,” words cemented onto the entrance arches of the U.S. Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens. An odd triangulation of Finnish snow, high-velocity air, human knees, and urban concrete, yes? The acknowledgment that the very intensity of the contest generates the opportunity to be "the best version of myself on and off the hill.” They pivot now toward the Canadian snows of Val St. Come in January, carrying the weight of that acquired privilege, loving the mogul skiing enough to bear it all.