Path to the Olympics: Troy native Hunt trains America's freestyle skiers

Like many other youth growing up in Troy, Justin Hunt headed over to Schweitzer a couple of times to try his luck going down the mountain on skis.

Hunt showed no particular skill for the sport and skied maybe only a half-dozen or so times in the following years.

But these days, Hunt’s life revolves around skiing. For more than four years now, he’s served as the head athletic trainer for the U.S. freestyle ski team. And he’s currently in Vancouver with hopes that his athletes will make their way to the podium to receive Olympic medals.

“Words can’t describe it at times,” Hunt said when asked how it feels to be headed to the Olympics. “It’s that kind of experience that you see once in a lifetime. It’s especially exciting because I’m going with a group of athletes that I’ve been working with for the past four years.”

Training last week in Steamboat Springs, Colo., the athletes and coaches were scheduled to arrive in Vancouver this past Sunday. Opening Ceremonies are scheduled for Friday evening with the first freestyle skiing events getting started on Saturday.

Hunt, 33, oversees about 40 athletes in freestyle skiing – a relatively new addition to the Winter Olympics. Freestyle moguls became an Olympic medal sport in 1992 with freestyle aerials added in 1994. And at the Vancouver Olympics, the ski cross event will make its debut.

Hunt runs these unique athletes through a rigorous program.

“There is a lot of dry land training, obviously a lot of skiing and conditioning,” Hunt said this past Thursday via telephone from Steamboat Springs.

The freestyle ski events, as well as snowboarding, will be staged at Cypress Mountain.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the snow,” Hunt said. “It’s been pretty much raining there a lot. They’ve been trucking in snow, helicoptering in snow, doing everything they can to get it done, and they obviously will.”

Many of the other events are held at Whistler Olympic Park – a venue further up the coast that Hunt said has received a lot of snow.

The job takes Hunt and the athletes to many different venues around the world. Working out of the U.S. ski team’s home base in Park City, Utah, training never stops – even during the summer.

“During the summer, the aerial and mogul team starts out with a conditioning camp in San Diego in May where we do conditioning on the beach and surfing,” Hunt said. “Yeah, sounds rough. I have to admit it’s our best camp of the year.”

Besides Park City, other training sessions are usually staged in places like Chile and Switzerland. Over the years, competitions have taken Hunt to those two countries along with China, Japan, Austria, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Norway and Sweden.

“I’m usually gone from December until the end of March, so I only come home for a couple of days during that time, possibly a week,” Hunt said, who has a wife, Wendy.

Hunt graduated from Troy High School in 1995. His mother and stepdad, Peggy and Tony Smith, live in Troy. His father, Tim Hunt, formerly lived in Troy and now resides in Drummond.

Hunt graduated from the University of Montana in 2000.

“One of the reasons I was on the five-year plan is I majored in physical therapy and as I went along and did athletic training, I realized I wanted to work more with sports than in a clinic-type setting,” Hunt said. “I just kind of stuck with that.”

Hunt went on to graduate school at Michigan State University where he worked mostly with the football and baseball teams. After earning his master’s, Hunt headed to a clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he worked with Olympic-caliber athletes for the first time. He then ended up back in Missoula for three years as assistant athletic trainer. He accepted his current position in 2006.

Coincidentally, he has discovered some strong Montana connections.

For example, Scott Rawles, who is the head coach of the freestyle moguls team, was born in Libby.

“I don’t know how long he actually lived there for but I know his dad had ties to getting Turner Mountain started,” Hunt said. “That’s always been a joke between us – the Lincoln County connection.”

Hunt has also bonded with a couple of Montana skiers – Heather McPhie of Bozeman and Bryon Wilson of Butte.

“There’s this little thing we do at the top of the hill, I’ll yell, ‘Yeah, Montana,’” Hunt laughed.

McPhie is one of the team’s top prospects in moguls and Wilson, who happens to be a former Montana state champion in gymnastics, is also no stranger to the podium.

Hunt feels good about America’s Olympic chances. In the women’s mogul at the most recent World Cup competition, U.S. skiers finished 1-2-3-4. Those same four skiers are representing the United States in that event at Vancouver. Hannah Kearney won at the World Cup, McPhie has been on a hot streak and both Shannon Bahrke and Michelle Roark are right there.

On the men’s side, Wilson, Pat Deneen and Nate Roberts are among Rawles’s top prospects, along with Michael Morse.

“So, we definitely have podium potential on both sides,” Hunt said. “In aerials, we also have two of the top men in the world and they definitely have a chance to get on the stand as well.”

Jeret “Speedy” Peterson is a two-time Olympian in the aerials. Ryan St. Onge was the 2009 world champion.

Veteran alpine skiers Casey Puckett and Daron Rahlves will compete in the ski cross.