For someone who spends her days navigating the most intense mogul courses in the world, Jennifer Heil’s rise to the top has proceeded at a remarkable pace.

The 22-year-old from Spruce Grove is touted by many to be the next Olympic mogul champion, having placed fourth at the competition in Salt Lake in 2002. Yet even as she prepares for her big moment, Heil has not forgotten where she got her start on snow: Jasper.

“Living in Spruce Grove there isn’t a lot of great skiing in the area, so we would come down to Jasper as often as we could,” Heil told the Fitzhugh from a hotel in Lake Placid, New York, where the freestyle skiing World Cup circuit was stationed last weekend. 

Heil stepped into ski boots for the first time at the tender age of two, though she can’t recall if that momentous occasion was at Marmot Basin or not.

“That’s an experience that I don’t really remember,” she said with a laugh. Hitting the slopes was a family affair in the Heil household, and while she spent some time early in life on the gentle hills found in Edmonton, it wasn’t long before she was chasing her father down more serious terrain at Marmot.

“I can just remember coming to Jasper and being so excited and following my dad down through all the terrain and it was so steep and so deep,” Heil said. While most of her Marmot memories are positive, Heil does recall one unexpected incident that occurred when she was only six years of age.

“I remember we were getting on the Knob Chair with my dad and he somehow he missed the chair, so it was my first time riding a chairlift by myself. The bar was so heavy I couldn’t bring it down, so there I was, six-years-old and all alone on the Knob Chair with no bar.”

Since then, Heil’s been pretty comfortable carving her own path. She joined the Edmonton Ski Club at the age of nine. Unlike many young skiers, Heil declined the option of ski racing, instead joining the freestyle team right away.

“I’ve never done any sort of ski racing,” she said. For Heil, the attractive part about skiing moguls has always been in the variation every time down the hill.

“It’s a very technical, demanding sport,” she said. “There are so many elements involved, so you can never ski the same run twice. There is no way to get bored.”

Boring is certainly not the word to describe competitive mogul racing. The first organized race is believed to have been run in 1966, with the inaugural world championships occuring twenty years later. Despite this, moguls did not debut at the Olympics until Albertville in 1992, because IOC officials feared that the sport was too dangerous.

Nowadays, the average mogul course is 200 to 270 metres in length, with metre-high bumps spaced three metres apart all the way down. The course also includes two “kickers”, jumps that divide the course into thirds. Racers have to keep their bodies facing the finish line and keep their skis in contact with the snow at all times when they are not flying through the air after a jump. 

The sport exploded into the consciousness of Canadian fans in 1994, when Jean-Luc Brassard captured Olympic gold in Lillehammer. It’s a moment that Heil, who had at that point been skiing moguls with a club for two years, remembers well. She still considers Brassard as one of her idols in the sport, even though the Quebecois skier retired after the 2002 Olympics.

“He’s an amazing skier and an amazing role model for our sport,” Heil said. “The first year I made the national team I think I was more excited about being on Jean-Luc’s team than anything else.”

Heil’s own race to the top saw her capture the Canadian championship in 2000 and since then, she has enjoyed a tremendously consistent reign on or near the podium at World Cup events in Europe, Asia and North America.

At Salt Lake in 2002, Heil was the youngest member of Canada’s Olympic team and came close to a historic result. Racing against world-class veterans, she missed out on a bronze medal by a mere 1/100th of a point.

The subsequent season, Heil took the unusual step of taking an entire year off, beginning her post-secondary education at McGill University in Montreal, and focusing on an intense off-piste training regimen. 

Back on the elite circuit in 2004, Heil made history as the first Canadian woman to capture the overall World Cup points title. She defended her crown last season, despite suffering from a broken thumb for much of the year. This year, Heil is on course towards a remarkable three-peat, having captured the season-opening race in France and taking the silver medal in three other races.

The World Cup takes her to a new venue almost every week, but Heil is always eager to hit the slopes and train.

“The sport changed the rules recently, so now we can do flips,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun to be learning flips and more difficult tricks and to work them out.”

To be a successful mogul racer, a skier must score well in three separate categories: speed, turns and tricks. While some athletes on the World Cup circuit are noted for their prowess in one area or another, Heil believes her strength lies in her all-around abilities.

“On some weekends I have the highest speed score and on others I have the top jump score,” she said. “I guess the goal is to have the highest score for all three.

“I am a natural skier and I’ve been ripping it up in the mountains. So I’m really comfortable on steep, long, demanding courses.”

The mogul venue for the Torino games fits that bill. Located outside the Alpine village of Sauze d’Oulx, the course drops nearly 100 metres over a distance of less than 300 metres. Heil knows that there are big things expected of her going into the race on February 11, but she claims that she’ll be preparing herself as she usually would.

“I never approach competitions saying I’m going to win. It’s all about having a performance goal and I’m approaching the Olympics the way I do with any weekend,” she said.

Heil will have finished her event by the time other athletes are just getting settled into the Olympic Village for the two-week extravaganza of sport and that schedule is fine by her.

“The coolest part of going to the Olympics is getting to meet other athletes on the Canadian team,” she said. “In Salt Lake, I was watching TV with Mario Lemieux in one of the lounges and I’m sure this time I’ll have more of those kind of moments. Because I’m done early, I can go and cheer on all the other athletes.” 

With little more than two weeks to go before the main event, Heil is focused on the task ahead, but is happy to speak at length about Jasper and Marmot Basin. Heil took a short break just before New Year’s and came with her family for a few days of relaxation in the mountains, including some time at the hill.

“Getting a chance to ski in Jasper is really special for me,” she said, adding that the Eagle Ridge area is home to her favourite terrain on the mountain. “I don’t get an opportunity to free ski a lot, it’s all competition and preparation.”

Her continued support for the area is being reciprocated by Marmot Basin and Mountain Park Lodges, both of which are sponsoring Heil.

“Our view of supporting her is that she is a local girl from Spruce Grove who trained and skied at Marmot before she moved her way up into the international scene in freestyle,” said Brian Rode, vice president of marketing for the resort. “Jenn can help with exposure of Jasper when she’s out on the circuit.”

Heil might not be a household name here or across Canada, but Rode believes that will change soon.

“I think she deserves a much, much higher profile ... people in Jasper, many people don’t know about her but they’re sure going to hear about her during the Olympics.”