Vail skier returns to World Cup moguls skiing 7 months after spine surgery
The Ski and Snowboard Club Vail alumna, 23, will kick off her 8th World Cup season in Ruka, Finland Dec. 2-3
Jeff Swinger/AP photo
Olympian Tess Johnson isn’t ready to call it a career yet. Not even close.
“I want to be able to ski for the rest of my life and feel good doing it,” the Vail-raised athlete said. “I want to ski moguls when I’m 75.”
Those ambitions — plus the more tangible targets of making another Olympic team — formed the calculus for Johnson, 23, to undergo spinal surgery at the Steadman Clinic last April and fix her chronically injured herniated L5 S1 disc. The pain hindered Johnson the last two seasons and worsened significantly this past winter, even forcing the Ski and Snowboard Club Vail alumna to pull out of the 2022 World Cup opener in Ruka, Finland.
“(I) never really felt 100% after that,” Johnson said of a campaign in which she finished 12th in the overall moguls standings, a slight step down from the previous five-year string of placements: 7-5-10-6-5.
“The whole winter was really, really inhibiting for me,” she said. “Physically, I just did not feel like I could ski my best.”
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Back in Ruka to kick off her eighth World Cup season this Saturday, Johnson hinted in a Zoom call last Saturday that she’s back — maybe better, at least in some ways.
“I’m feeling good, I’m feeling excited,” she said before adding, “I didn’t have a ton of on-snow training this summer.”
Putting the latter, inherent downside of an arduous rehab aside, here’s one positive: the self-admitted “technical geek” was able to indulge her analytical appetite along the process-product performance continuum.
“It was kind of cool to relearn basic movements with very, very correct form,” said Johnson, who became the youngest mogul skier ever named to the national team in 2014.
One day after Dr. Sonny Gill’s operation, she started working with physical therapist Brooke Milliet at Howard Head. For two weeks, she couldn’t bend, twist, or lift anything. Eventually, she moved back to Park City — she now lives in Salt Lake City full time — to continue with U.S. Ski Team physical therapists Jill Radzinski and Maddi Beck five days a week. She planted herself at the Center of Excellence for 4-6 hours a day, doing exercises, cardio work and meeting with sports psychologists and on-snow coaches to watch competition video.
“It was a massive effort to help me get through the injury physically and mentally,” Johnson said. She was training aerials on the water ramp by July and skiing in New Zealand in August. By late-September, she felt 100% normal.
“Now that the injury is fixed and healed, I’m free to ski the way that I want to and attack the way that I want to,” said Johnson, who said she “subconsciously made physical and mental adjustments” in competition to protect her spine in 2022 and 2023.
“I think I definitely was worrying about it last season and didn’t even realize it.”
A bigger bag of tricks
Though she’s shed those protective mechanisms, the 2019 World Championship dual moguls bronze medalist is carrying a few things over from last year in terms of tricks. She called her decision to experiment last year with different top and bottom-air combinations “a good and necessary thing” for the post-Olympics season.
“But that came at the cost, of course, of not the best results,” she said. “On the flip side, I think experimenting with those new tricks was really fun and motivating.”
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Beefing up her already wide-ranging aerial arsenal offers flexibility within a sport requiring constant course, weather and circumstantial-dependent decisions.
“It’s really a mixed bag, and that’s kind of the dream — to be able to have options,” she said.
Considering Ruka’s steepness, challenging top-air and abundantly cold snow, Johnson is leaning towards a back-X to cork-720.
“The bottom air you can go massive on,” Johnson said.
“I was even talking with my coach today, like, if I can do my tricks on these jumps, then likely I can do them anywhere.”
SSCV connections
Arguably one of the more globally competitive branches of the U.S. Ski Team, the women’s mogul squad is rich with SSCV blood. 2022 Olympian Kai Owens will return this year after knee and shoulder injuries wiped away her 2023 campaign.
“I’m sure she’s taken a lot of life lessons out of (her) injuries because that’s what tends to happen. No matter who you are, injuries in an elite sport change the perspective of both the sport and life,” Johnson commented. “Being away from the sport for so long with two heavy-duty injuries … It’s just great to have her back.”
Johnson has been rooming with Liz Lemley during the Ruka buildup. The 17-year-old SSCV product burst onto the scene when she finished sixth at the Deer Valley World Cup as a 15-year-old. She notched her first World Cup win last December and hit the podium again in Alpe D’Huez, France, and Chiesa in Valmalenco, Italy.
“She’s gotten so much stronger,” Johnson said of Lemley. “It’s been really cool (for her to) put that work in in the gym and see it pay off. I’m expecting great things from her, as always.”
The Colorado-heavy U.S. moguls roster bonded over watching Mikaela Shiffrin during a recent training camp in Levi, Finland. Johnson and Hannah Soar grabbed lunch with Paula Moltzan. Over Thanksgiving, the team bopped over to watch the cross-country ski World Cup opener in Ruka.
“There is not a lot of crossover, so when we do get to see each other, we ask each other kind of like all the stupid questions,” Johnson laughed.
“Like, ‘OK, so what wax do you use? How many skis do you bring?'”
Two things can be true at once
Navigating injury and performance pressures on the biggest stage has equipped Johnson with a unique mental skillset. Her experiences have also inspired her to pursue clinical psychology when her skiing career does eventually wind down.
“I would love to work one day with athletes like myself,” she said.
Johnson said her goals for Ruka are still evolving, adding that having less time on snow during the prep period is “a factor, but by no means inhibiting” to optimal performance. For the season, she’s fully focused on process goals, hoping to “stay present at every event.”
“I think I tend to get wrapped up in the outcome and that’s when I tend to tense up. I’m not thinking about any results, scores or places. I’m just trying to see how well I can perform my run on any given day,” she said.
“I think especially on these first few World Cups, like, giving myself the grace to navigate whatever challenges might come my way post-surgery — I’m definitely going to take it as it comes.”
She’s at peace knowing the timing for the operation — during the first non-global championship season in three years — was ideal.
“It’s a good year to get this done and build only up to the Olympics,” she said. For now, the 2025 world championships in Engadine, Switzerland, and the 2026 Olympics in Milano-Cortina, Italy, remain the long-range targets.
“But putting less pressure on myself to get there,” Johnson said. “I think as you get older in a career and life in general, you realize there’s more flexibility to be had, and that’s a good thing.”
When asked if she’s satisfied with her career, Johnson’s paradoxical answer is as ambitious and spirited as her desire to ski bumps as a septuagenarian.
“I’m innately a very competitive, driven person and my dream truly is still to go to the Olympics and win the gold medal. That will be my dream and something I work towards for as long as I’m in this sport, genuinely,” she said before adding that two things can be true at once.
“And, at the same time, I am so proud of everything I have accomplished.”
