Jonny Moseley

Medal record
Men's freestyle skiing
Competitor for United States
Olympic Games
Gold	1998 Nagano	Moguls
FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships
Bronze	1995 La Clusaz	Combined

Jonathan William Moseley, better known as Jonny Moseley (born August 27, 1975), is the first Puerto Rican to become a member of the U.S. Ski Team.

Early years

Moseley was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1978, he saw snow for the first time when his family went on a trip to California. Eventually, his family moved to Tiburon, California, a suburb north of San Francisco where he attended The Branson School in Ross, California. His family would go to the Sierra Nevada every weekend. This, and the fact that he was a better skier than his brothers, inspired the then nine-year-old Moseley to take skiing lessons. In 1992, he joined the Squaw Valley Freestyle Ski Team and soon won his first Junior National title in Freestyle Skiing; he graduated from high school in 1993 and that same year was selected for the U.S. Ski Team.

United States Ski Team

Moseley tried but did not qualify for the 1994 Winter Olympics held at Lillehammer, Norway and became determined to qualify for the 1998 Olympics. In 1995, he enrolled at UC-Davis but, his education was interrupted by his intense training; it was not until 2000 that he resumed his studies. The following year, he won his first World Cup moguls event.

In 1998, Moseley participated and won the first two World Cup events of the year; this led to his participation in the 1998 Winter Olympics held in Nagano, Japan, where he won a gold medal. Later that year he secured the 1998 World Cup Mogul Skiing title with nine wins that season. He also won the U.S. National title.

In 1999, Moseley challenged the International Skiing federation to change their policy and to allow their athletes to participate in professional events, such as ESPN's X Games where he earned a silver medal in the Big Air event. Moseley was the first skier to medal in both the X-Games (silver) and the Olympics (Gold).

In 2000, Moseley won the U.S. Free skiing Open and in 2001 regained a spot in the U.S. Ski Team at the World Cup qualifications held at Sunday River, Maine. In 2002, Moseley competed but came in fourth place in the Olympic Games.

In 2002, Moseley gave the commencement convocation address at UC Berkeley. The choice by the senior class committee was controversial at the time because Moseley had dropped out of college.

Honors and recognitions

Among the honors and recognitions which Jonny Moseley has received is a parade in his honor where San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown declared a "Jonny Moseley Day" and handed him the "key" to the city. He was named "Sportsman of the Year" (1998) by the U.S. Olympic Committee and has been featured on the cover of Freeskier and Rolling Stone magazines.

He was also chosen to be the traditional post-Olympics athlete host of Saturday Night Live in 2002, hosting the March 3, 2002, episode of the show with musical guest Outkast. On the show, he performed a sketch called "Jonny's Journey," in which he went "around the world on a never-ending Dinner Roll" via a green screen.

Jonny is largely credited with having brought the Iron Cross trick into the limelight, where a two-planker crosses their skis midair during a jump. This was a radical departure from the old school air tricks, which included Daffies, Backscratchers and Moonwalks (see Glen Plake).

Personal life

Moseley married Malia Rich, a business manager, on March 25, 2006, in Telluride, Colorado. Moseley met Rich in high school; the couple started dating in 2001 and got engaged on April 20, 2003.

On September 4, 2007, Rich gave birth to the couple's first child, named Jonathan William Moseley, Jr. "Jack" in San Francisco, California.

Later years

Moseley launched a web site which sells products with his logo on them and has appeared on advertisements for McDonalds and Sprint.

Moseley, who currently lives in California, was the host of three seasons of the MTV reality show Real World/Road Rules Challenge. He is part of the celebrity panel of judges (along with Steve Garvey and Oksana Baiul) on the ABC show "Master of Champions". After the 2002 Olympics Moseley hosted Saturday Night Live.

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley on May 17, 2007 with a B.A. in American Studies focusing on Consumer and Popular Culture.

Moseley doing a trick jump at the Icer Air 2005 event held on the streets of San Francisco, September 29, 2005.

Moseley is famous for an aerial ski move called "The Dinner Roll". Moseley talked about it during a 2002 speech at UC Berkeley:

"The Dinner Roll is a trick I developed for the ’99 X-Games. It’s a 720 degree off axis rotation, wherein you ski off the jump, do two full rotations, one on the horizontal plane and the other on the vertical plane. At the X-Games where everything is "extreme" and "rad" the jumps are big, and you have lots of time in the air. The Olympic moguls course is a whole different ball game. It’s steep, with tight turns, and a small narrow technical jump, with an unforgiving landing. The trick was so new that we had to appeal to the Olympic Skiing Federation in order just to do it. We had to show them that it fell within their rule stating "no inverted tricks in the moguls" and also prove that it was not dangerous. After lobbying and video explanation we pushed it through by one vote, much to the chagrin of the European countries."

In 2008, Warren Miller's Children of Winter was released with Moseley as the narrator. He was also in the movie as he has been in a few Warren Miller ski movies in the past. Moseley narrates and skis in Warren Miller's latest film called Dynasty. Moseley also hosts a weekly radio program on Sirius/XM's channel called "The Faction". Moseley was the color analyst for NBC at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver for the moguls, aerials and ski cross events.

In 2010 he was cast on the ABC show Skating with the Stars where he will be paired with retired Pairs skater Brooke Castile. Mosley finished in third place as second runner-up. He is currently the host of the latest viral marketing campaign by Ford Motor Company, Focus Rally America.

See also

• List of famous Puerto Ricans

External links

• Personal web site
• Berkeley 2004 press release