Olympics-Freestyle Skiing-Ferris Bueller to Ferreira’s rescue as American goes for gold

By Karolos Grohmann

MILAN, Feb 6 (Reuters) – American freestyle skier Alex Ferreira is a gold medal short of a complete Olympic set but the 31-year-old is not putting too much pressure on himself, choosing instead a Ferris Bueller-approach to the Milano Cortina Games to ease any tension.

Ferris Bueller is the title character of the 1986 coming-of-age movie ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ where he fakes sickness to skip school and enjoys a carefree yet incident-filled day out in Chicago with his girlfriend and best friends.   

That happy-go-lucky approach is part of Ferreira’s preparations as he chases his elusive gold medal in the freeski halfpipe after winning silver at Pyeongchang 2018 and a bronze medal four years later in Beijing.

“I think to balance the sport, completing the set, the pressure of the sport and enjoying myself at the same time is really difficult,” Ferreira told a press conference on Friday. “It is certainly a fine line.

“All theses athletes … are feeling a tremendous amount of nerves and that’s good. That means we all care, right?

“At the same time you have to take a bit of a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-approach. Stop and look around every once in a while and enjoy it. Just pick your head up. Take your eyes off the phone and take it all in because you never know if you are coming back,” he said. 

Ferreira is no stranger to comedy, having created the ‘Hotdog Hans’ character, a bearded, crusty old man who plays pranks on other skiers. Ferreira uses a face mold to appear old. Hotdog Hans has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

“I dress up like an old man with prosthetics and I mess with people on the ski slopes. One day I am 90 years old and one day I am 30 years old,” Ferreira said.

About 70% of all Winter Olympics athletes compete in the Games just once in their careers.

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris)