PARK CITY, UT (Jan. 29) – On Saturday the U.S. Alpine Ski Team will appear from a vantage never shown on television, let alone primetime television, as NBC premiers "Truth in Motion: The U.S. Ski Team's Road to Vancouver" at 8 p.m. ET. With just two weeks remaining until the Vancouver Olympics, the Audi-funded documentary covers the gritty lives of these skiers in their quest for Olympic gold.
The feature also airs at 8 p.m. Pacific and 7 p.m. Central and Mountain.
"Truth in Motion" stars 2010 U.S. Olympic Alpine Ski Team athletes Ted Ligety (Park City, UT), Sarah Schleper (Vail, CO), Jake Zamansky (Aspen, CO) and Tommy Ford (Bend, OR). There are also cameo appearances by Bode Miller (Franconia, NH), Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) and Scott Macartney (Crystal Mountain, WA) along with numerous coaches and ski technicians who support this Team.
"You see exactly what we're going through every day," said Ligety, the 2006 Olympic combined gold medalist. "I don't think anybody has ever gotten a truly in-depth look at ski racing. It's cool in that respect. This portrays what we do.
Directed by Academy Award nominee Brett Morgen, the film takes you inside the locker room in every aspect of the being an elite ski racer, only their locker room is Portillo, Chile; Saas Fee, Switzerland; Soelden, Austria, on airplanes, long car rides and hotel rooms across the globe.
"This film spends more time on the characters and people, the personalities and the perseverance," said Scott Keogh, chief marketing officer for Audi of America, which has supported the U.S. Ski Team since 2007.
There is a noted lack of glamour as the film takes you through pre dawn wakeup calls to check lactate levels and stretch before riding a frozen chairlift to work. The athletes are candid, raw and provide an insight to their sport that cannot be seen in a two-minute race.
"There were numerous moments where people said things to us that shocked and surprised us at how open they were," said Morgen, who followed the Team from Chile to Park City and then to Switzerland and Austria. "It was very important for us to let the skiing tell the story."
Schleper provides a unique aspect to the film as she delves into the difficulties of juggling motherhood with working to achieve her Olympic dream. Following two missed seasons after the 2006 Olympics – one to a torn ACL and the other for the birth of her son Lasse, who turns two Saturday – Schleper battled back into the World Cup elite and successfully made her fourth Olympic Team.
"This film is going to have a really positive impact on our sport," said Schleper. "For me, it's such a different path to the Olympics than most, but in a lot of ways, more fulfilling. I have Lasse and I have my wonderful husband Federico with me. It's going to be cool to show this to Lasse when he's older, you know embarrass him a little with his high school girlfriend or something."
After logging over 400 hours of footage, Morgen and crew edited the miles of tape into an hour-long program that opens with Macartney's life changing crash in Kitzbuehel, Austria. It then follows the Team through summer on-snow training in Chile, into the Center of Excellence in Park City and through final preparations for the World Cup season before closing with the season opening World Cup in Soelden, Austria.
For Zamansky and Ford, it's about the struggle of competing as a Team, yet fighting for the same Olympic spots. Only Zamansky, 28, is a seven-year veteran and Ford, 20, is skiing only his first World Cup season.
"It's not every day that the American public gets to see what we as ski racers do outside of the Olympics," said Ligety, who captured the fifth World Cup win of his career Friday. "It's the first time any major production crew does. It shows what we do to get to the top and pursue our passion."
"Truth in Motion: The U.S. Ski Team's Road to Vancouver" airs Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 7 p.m. Central and Mountain on NBC – the Olympic Network.
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