Connecticut aerials pipeline produces two world champions

The crystal globes sit on countertops at their parents houses in Connecticut. Kiley McKinnon took home the womens and Mac Bohonnon, the mens.

The audaciously captured trophies were awarded to the elementary school classmates who became the 2014-15 world aerial skiing champions. The rewards speak as much to the talent that came out of Island Avenue Elementary School in Madison, Connecticut, as from Americas aerials pipeline, which is producing champions after years in start-up mode.

This is sort of the first wave of developmental athletes, said the 19-year-old Bohonnon, who is among those who got their training in the U.S. ski teams seven-year-old Elite Aerial Development Program. The national team is full, the development program is full. People are coming out every summer. It creates bottom pressure. The kids in the development programs, its inspiring for them to see us winning, to realize theyre in the same program we came up in.

It was at Bohonnons urging that McKinnon took her first look at aerials a daredevil sport that demands fast trips down an icy ramp that sends skiers flying 50 feet in the air while they perform a number of flips and twists and hope to stick the landing.

Her background isnt unlike those of the dozens who take up the sport. She was a high-level gymnast who was good on skis and looking for a way to parlay that into something more.

Mac said, Were looking for girls, you should come try aerials, the 20-year-old McKinnon said. That summer, I went to Lake Placid to check it out.

That trip to the Olympic Training Center, home of the development program, came in 2010, a few months after Jeret Speedy Peterson produced Americas most electric single moment in the sport landing his trademark, five-spinning Hurricane jump to win an Olympic silver medal.

But Peterson was one of the last in an earlier, successful generation of U.S. jumpers who were slowly being overtaken by skiers in China, Australia and Belarus. Skiing leaders in those countries saw medal opportunities and started luring legions of gymnasts and divers over to the mountain. Outside of Petersons silver, those three countries have won every aerials medal in the last two Olympics.

Meanwhile, the U.S. only sent three jumpers to Russia, down from eight the previous Olympics. It was the endgame of a messy, bureaucratic selection process in which the U.S. ski team must divvy up Olympic spots among several freestyle events: aerials, moguls, halfpipe, slopestyle and skicross. The ultimate goal is to send people with the best chances of winning medals in their respective disciplines.

Bohonnon almost came through.

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Connecticut aerials pipeline produces two world champions