Peterson Only U.S. Qualifier in Aerials

It would not have been surprising if all four U.S. aerial freestyle skiers had advanced to Thursday’s men’s finals at the Winter Olympics.

But these Turin Games have been full of surprises -- few of them good for the United States -- and here’s another one: Jeret “Speedy” Peterson is his country’s only hope to win an Olympic aerial medal.

Though they were scattered throughout the 31-skier qualifying lineup -- trying with two runs apiece to become among the 12 athletes to advance to the finals -- the U.S contingent shared a common problem: Unhappy landings.

Not so for Dmitri Dashinski. The skier from Belarus landed with the elegance of a gymnast after both of his dizzying aerial routines -- and was rewarded with the top-qualifying score, 250.45.

Even Peterson had trouble finishing his routines -- he sat back on both landings -- but he still managed a combined score of 227.21 and qualified eighth.

“Landings are the most important part of aerials,” said Peterson, 24, of Boise, Idaho. He was 12th at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics but more recently has been a consistent top-three performer on the World Cup circuit.

“If you don’t land, you might as well not even show up. It doesn’t matter how great of a jump you have,” he said. “So that’s something I need to work on and that is what I’ll be doing the next couple of days, to figure out what it will take to get me to the top.”

Joe Pack, who won silver at Salt Lake City, showed up for his first run and apparently nailed it, but caught an inside edge and did the splits a split second after touching down. His score: 97.57. He sat back on his second touchdown and received a 113.76 for an overall score of 211.33, which placed the athlete from Park City, Utah, 15th.

Ryan St. Onge, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., also touched snow with the seat of his pants --twice -- and ended up 16th.

“I hate to chalk it up to the nature of aerials, but a little bit is for sure that,” he said. “It’s a very challenging sport. The most consistent people in the world are not at all consistent.

“All four of our men [regularly reach the] podium, and most podium multiple times, so I guess that today just wasn’t our day.”

It certainly was not Eric Bergoust’s day. At 36 the oldest member of the U.S. team and gold medalist at Nagano in 1998, he botched both of his landings and finished 17th.

“It’s disappointing. It’s very disappointing,” Coach Jeff Wintersteen said. “I’m still psyched for Speedy and we still have a shot to win this thing, but I would have liked to have all the guys in there -- we should have had them all in there.

“But our goal is to win this event and we still have a chance to do that.”

They do, if Speedy can slow down a bit on his rotation and stick a couple of landings.

Pete Thomas is a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.