Trace Worthington

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Trace Worthington Freestyle skiing
Full name Tracy Jon Worthington
nation United StatesUnited States United States
birthday 28th November 1969 (age 50)
place of birth Minneapolis , USA
size 178 cm
Weight 73 kg
job Sports reporter, entrepreneur
Career
discipline Aerials, moguls, ballet,
combination
status resigned
End of career Fall 1997
Medal table
World championships 2 × gold 1 × silver 0 × bronze
FIS Freestyle Skiing World Championships
silver Altenmarkt-Zauchensee 1993 combination
gold La Clusaz 1995 Aerials
gold La Clusaz 1995 combination
Placements in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup
 Debut in the World Cup December 11, 1988
 World Cup victories 37
 Overall World Cup 1. (1991/92, 1992/93)
 Aerials World Cup 1. (1994/95)
 Mughal World Cup 30. (1991/92)
 Ballet World Cup 14th (1994/95)
 Combination World Cup 1. (1991/92, 1992/93, 1994/95)
 Podium placements 1. 2. 3.
 Aerials 10 11 7th
 combination 27 12 6th
 

Tracy Jon "Trace" Worthington (born November 28, 1969 in Minneapolis , Minnesota ) is a former American freestyle skier . Trace "The Ace", as his nickname, started most of his career in all disciplines and had his strengths in aerials (jumping). In 1995 he became the first freestyler to become double world champion in this discipline and in combination. He also won the overall freestyle World Cup twice, as well as four discipline ratings and 37 individual competitions.

biography

Childhood and youth

Trace Worthington was born in Minnesota in 1969 and spent the first years of his life there. His great-grandfather was the long jumper Harry Worthington (1891-1990), who had participated in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm . Trace learned to ski at the age of three in Wisconsin , where his father worked as a ski instructor. At the same age, he began to exercise on his own trampoline and discovered his love for aerial acrobatics. He later relocated with his family to Winter Park , Colorado . While he was also active in other sports such as hockey or baseball , he finally decided to go skiing. He gained his first experience with backflips on a self-made kicker in the forest. At the age of 14 he first took part in freestyle competitions in Colorado.

Athletic career

In 1986 Trace Worthington became world junior champion and a year later American youth champion in freestyle jumping. He was accepted into the national team and made his debut in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup in December 1988 shortly after his 19th birthday . With ninth place in Tignes , he celebrated a successful debut in the aerials world class. Just a few weeks later, he was second in Calgary for the first time on a World Cup podium and thus qualified for the World Championships in Oberjoch , where he finished in a remarkable fifth place. He also finished fifth in the discipline classification.

From his second World Cup season, Worthington also started in ballet and on the moguls , which should increase the chances of winning the overall World Cup. He celebrated his first World Cup victory in La Clusaz in March 1990 in his parade discipline, two days later he also won the combined classification at the same location. At the end of the season, he finished third in both the overall and the combined disciplines. In the winter of 1990/91 he achieved four World Cup victories and an improvement to second place in the combined ranking. At the World Championships in Lake Placid , he narrowly missed his first medal as fourth in the combination after he had not got past 14th in the Aerials. In the following season he dominated the combination and managed a total of eleven victories, which he won the overall World Cup for the first time. In the Moguls he achieved the only top result of his career with seventh place in Oberjoch. At the Olympic Winter Games of Albertville , he played only the two demonstration contests and seventh in jumping and eleventh was the ballet. In November 1992 he contracted a shoulder dislocation at a trampoline show in Albany and missed the first two jumps of the season. Nevertheless, he was able to continue his dominance in the overall World Cup with several victories. At the world championships in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee, however , he had to admit defeat to Sergei Schuplezow in the combination and won the silver medal.

In 1993/94, Worthington fell back to third in the overall World Cup due to a knee injury. In the Olympic Games of Lillehammer where Aerials was first held as a full-fledged discipline, he finished fifth on the moguls, he had to settle for 19th place. In the winter that followed, he found his way back to his old strength and, thanks to four victories this season, he won the Aerials discipline for the first time. In ballet, he reached a career high with three top 10 placements, including sixth at Hundfjället. In the overall World Cup he had to admit defeat to his compatriot Jonny Moseley despite a total of ten World Cup victories . He celebrated his greatest career success in February 1995 at the World Championships in La Clusaz, where he won the gold medal in both aerials and combined. He thus crowned himself the first double world champion in freestyle history. In the following two winters he focused in terms of the Olympic Games of Nagano fully on his best discipline, but had increasingly dizzy spells to fight. Despite targeted training, he ended his career in the autumn of 1997 after he did not feel able to realize his dream of Olympic gold.

In 1999 he competed in ski cross at the X Games in Crested Butte and reached seventh place.

Further career

After retiring for health reasons, Trace Worthington switched to television and made his radio debut for Fox in 1997 . In February 1998 he commented on the Olympic Winter Games for the first time and remained in the profession afterwards. He has worked as a presenter, commentator and chief analyst for CBS , NBC and Red Bull . In addition to freestyle competitions, he commented on the Red Bull Crashed Ice and Cliff Diving World Series and sports such as short track , snowboard , mountain bike and dog races . In addition, he initially worked as a designer for a ski brand and model for Tommy Hilfiger . In 1998, Worthington and his former teammate Kris "Fuzz" Feddersen founded Flying Ace Productions , which offers trampoline and aerial acrobatics shows in the USA. In 2009 he retired as co-president, but continues to work with his partner. He also appeared in a total of eight ski films by Warren Miller and other directors.

Worthington lives in Park City , Utah with his wife Trisha and two daughters .

Style and reception

Trace Worthington is considered an all-time great in the aerials discipline and one of the best freestyle skis of the early 1990s. Based on the name for successful military pilots , it was nicknamed Trace "The Ace". He is described in retrospect as an innovator because he 1993 became the first American to snow very difficult Quad (Ruple) twisting triple back flip , a jump with four-time rotation and three backflips , succeeded. He practiced a variant with four somersaults and a water landing at the training center in Lake Placid during the summer months . Not least because of the media presence that extended beyond his active career, Trace Worthington remained firmly anchored in the collective memory of the US sports community. Already during his athletic career he enjoyed great popularity with the domestic audience and with 37 World Cup victories he became the most successful male freestyle skier in his country. Between 1992 and 1995 he was named US Freestyle Skier of the Year four times in a row by Ski Racing Magazine , and in 1993 he was also named International Skier of the Year. In 2006, the US Ski Association honored him with his acceptance into the National Ski Hall of Fame.

successes

Olympic games

World championships

World Cup ratings

season total Aerials Moguls ballet combination
space Points space Points space Points space Points space Points
1988/89 18th 21st 5. 125 - - - - - -
1989/90 3. 47 6th 126 37. 14th 18th 62 3. 80
1990/91 3 45 5. 194 38. 21st 22nd 57 2. 115
1991/92 1. 51 5. 175 30th 37 19th 75 1. 120
1992/93 1. 139 2. 564 44. 36 19th 284 1. 600
1993/94 3. 116 4th 668 50. 44 21st 216 6th 200
1994/95 2. 156 1. 772 - - 14th 420 1. 600
1995/96 66. 27 25th 240 - - - - - -
1996/97 47. 48 18th 380 - - - - - -

World Cup victories

Worthington achieved 73 podiums in the World Cup, including 37 victories:

date place country discipline
March 14, 1990 La Clusaz France Aerials
March 16, 1990 La Clusaz France combination
December 8, 1990 Tignes France combination
January 19, 1991 Piancavallo Italy combination
3rd February 1991 Mont Gabriel Canada combination
February 26, 1991 Scole Soviet Union Aerials
December 11, 1991 Zermatt Switzerland Aerials
December 12, 1991 Zermatt Switzerland combination
17th December 1991 Piancavallo Italy combination
January 12, 1992 Blackcomb Canada combination
January 19, 1992 Breckenridge United States combination
January 25, 1992 Lake Placid United States combination
March 1, 1992 Inawashiro Japan combination
March 5, 1992 Madarao Japan Aerials
March 5, 1992 Madarao Japan combination
March 8, 1992 Madarao Japan combination
March 14, 1992 Altenmarkt-Zauchensee Austria combination
January 10, 1993 Blackcomb Canada combination
17th January 1993 Breckenridge United States combination
January 23, 1993 Lake Placid United States combination
January 31, 1993 Le relay Canada combination
February 27, 1993 La Plagne France combination
March 28, 1993 Lillehammer Norway Aerials
March 28, 1993 Lillehammer Norway combination
December 12, 1993 Tignes France Aerials
December 12, 1993 Tignes France combination
March 5, 1994 Altenmarkt-Zauchensee Austria combination
17th December 1994 Tignes France combination
January 15, 1995 Breckenridge United States combination
January 21, 1995 Le relay Canada combination
January 22, 1995 Le relay Canada Aerials
January 28, 1995 Lake Placid United States Aerials
January 28, 1995 Lake Placid United States combination
February 4, 1995 Oberjoch Germany combination
February 10, 1995 Altenmarkt-Zauchensee Austria Aerials
March 5, 1995 Lillehammer Norway combination
March 11, 1995 Hundfjället Sweden Aerials

More Achievements

  • 11 US championship titles in aerials and combination

Filmography (selection)

  • 1993: Carving the White
  • 1995: Endless Winter
  • 1999: Freeriders
  • 2002: Cold Fusion

Awards

  • 1992–1995: US Freestyle Skier of the Year ( Ski Racing Magazine )
  • 1993: International Skier of the Year ( Ski Racing Magazine )
  • 2006: Induction into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Trace Worthington. Sports Reference LLC, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Trace Worthington - Hall of Fame Class of 2006. US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, accessed April 11, 2020 (English).
  3. ^ A b c Walter Roessing: Trace the Ace: World's Best Freestyler. In: Boy's Life. December 1993, pp. 40-42 (English).
  4. ^ Hotline - American Racers Achieve Success. In: Ski. March / April 1994, p. 17 (English).
  5. ↑ Freestyle Teams: Who Are Those Guys? In: Skiing. November 1995, p. 115 (English).
  6. ^ A b Paul Robbins: Trace's New Twist. In: Skiing. January 1998, p. 21 (English).
  7. ^ Hank McKee: Smooth Landing. In: Ski. February 1998, pp. 21-22 (English).
  8. ^ Trace Worthington. KSL, May 16, 2007, accessed on April 11, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b Trace Worthington. NBC , accessed April 11, 2020 .
  10. ^ Trace Worthington Broadcast Reel. Trace Worthington / Vimeo , March 22, 2016, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Flying Ace Productions. Flying Ace Productions, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  12. ^ Trisha Worthington Joins USSA. US Ski & Snowboard, March 26, 2014, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Rich Cooper: Olympic Aerial Skier Trace Worthington: A Trace of Gold. In: Rolling Stone , February 24, 1994 edition. Online , accessed April 11, 2020.
  14. ^ Olympic Profile. Trace Worthington, accessed April 11, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Worthington, Trace
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Worthington, Tracy Jon (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American freestyle skier
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis