FREESTYLE DESCRIPTION

Jonny Moseley, the top qualifier for the men’s finals Wednesday in freestyle mogul skiing, had a strong qualifying run that kept getting better the longer he thought about it Sunday.

“It was a good run but I can do a lot better than that,” he said at first.

But Moseley warmed to the task when asked to describe his second jump, an eye-popping 360 known in the trade as a helicopter/iron-cross grab.

“You do a helicopter and a position backward,” he said. “When I’m in the position, I grab the inside ski, my left ski, and I tweak it so it creates an effect of a cross, a really tweaked-out kind. It looks like I’m in a ball, I’ve got more air, it’s really exciting. People have never seen it and it’s cool to do.

“It was a great run, actually,” he concluded. “For a semifinals run, it was great.”

A CHANGE IN PLANS

Mogul skier Liz McIntyre, a Dartmouth graduate, is believed to be headed for retirement after this season but it may happen sooner than she was thinking about.

“I don’t know, I might do a few more World Cups but this year probably will be it,” she said when asked about her skiing career.

But Scott Newman, a former Times intern now working for the Bloomberg news service, told her he had recently talked to her parents, who’d said that after the Games, she was going to graduate school.

“Did you talk to Ann [Battelle’s] parents or my parents?” she asked.

“Yours,” Newman replied.

“Mine? OK, I’m going to graduate school,” McIntyre announced.

OVERZEALOUS REPORTER

It seems to happen every Olympics, and it apparently has happened here in Nagano: A newsman’s credential has been pulled.

The Japan Times reported in Monday’s editions that an Italian broadcast journalist ignored press guidelines and joined the parade of nations during Saturday’s opening ceremony.

According to the paper’s sources, the reporter slipped into the ranks of the New Zealand team and reported live on the ceremony while walking alongside the Kiwis’ flag bearer.