Skiing Is Olympic Gold Medalist's Act of Worship
“I've just always loved being off the ground. I’ve always been a daredevil.”
» DAVID WISE «
CHRISTIAN
HUSBAND & FATHER
PRO FREESTYLE SKIER
“Ask 10-year-old me what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a professional athlete,” David said confidently. “Like it was all about the showmanship for me.”
LIFE’S PASSION
“Growing up in the Tahoe area, it (skiing) was just what we did. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t natural to go skiing every single weekend,” David recalled.
“I grew up in a Christian family. I always looked up to my dad as my hero. So, my parent’s divorce was tough on me,” the skier admitted. “I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that my dad wasn’t perfect, but when I did, it kinda crushed me. And I had to discover, ‘Okay, why don't I assess the things that he's told me and see if I believe them for myself.’”
PURSUING HIS DREAM
PURSUING TRUTH
“I started reading the Koran, and the Book of Mormon and the Apocrypha and I sort of just delved deep into all the other religious texts available to me,” told David. “And I discovered I was a follower of Christ because that was my identity. The difference in Christianity is, Christ came down to us. He loved us enough to sacrifice his life. And that changes the whole dynamic.”
MEANWHILE…
“I was militant in terms of desiring success,” David said of his freestyle skiing career. “I was training, I was working hard, I had all these new tricks that nobody else could do, but I couldn't seem to land a run to save my life, in competition. I couldn’t let go. I couldn't just let God control it. And I can remember thinking, ‘God, this isn't part of the plan. Why are you doing this to me? No, that's not right!’”
THEN…
A BRIDE – ALEXANDRA
A DAUGHTER - NAYELI
“I realized, ‘Okay, at the end of the day, this little just bundle of love, doesn't care whether I win another competition in my life or not,’” David said of his newborn. “same thing with my wife. She doesn't care if I win or lose. She loves me for who I am. She loves me for who God made me to be.”
» BREAKTHROUGH «
“For the first time in my life I was truly just letting it all go and I was skiing just for the creator,” David said with a smile. “And I was like, ‘Honestly, I don't care what the judges think of me. I don't care whether they reward me for what I do or not. I'm doing this for Christ.’ And that's when I started winning.”
FIRST PLACE WINS
DEW TOUR
U.S. GRAND PRIX
2013 HALFPIPE WORLD CHAMP
“Once I started living and worshipping through my skiing, I almost couldn’t be beaten,” David said thinking back.
THEN…
2014 IN SOCHI
OLYMPIC GOLD
“It was perfectly timed. It's almost like God wrote the story.”
“All of a sudden, I went from this high time into some of the hardest, hardest times in my life personally and some of the least successful years of my career in skiing,” said David of the surprising turn of events.
LOSS
INJURIES
TRAGEDY
“My wife’s dad died, my sister was hit by a boat and lost her leg, my grandmother died, her grandmother died, one of our youth group students died,” David listed, “all of this sort of difficult stuff happened at once and that translated into me not being very mentally focused when I was skiing. Because people didn't really know what was going on in my life, they just wrote me off.”
0 PODIUM FINISHES
CRITICISM
DOUBT
“And a lot of my sponsors dropped me. I even got to the point where I was like, ‘Man, am I going to keep doing this or is that going to be the end of the story?’"
AFTER 3 YEARS OF STRUGGLES
“I think somewhere in the successful season, I was like, ‘Oh, this IS for the fame and glory,’” the skier realized. “(But) God was constantly trying to remind me, ‘No, this is your act of worship. This is what you do to worship me.’ Once I remembered that I started landing runs again and the timing was good. That was the tail end of 2017 going into the 2018 season, getting ready for another Olympics.”
PYEONG CHANG
2018 WINTER OLYMPICS
BEST OF THREE RUNS
RUN
1
“My ski came off on my first run.”
RUN 2
“My ski came off on my second run. So I had two throwaway scores. I was praying, I was just like ‘God, what is going on? And what can I do to land this last run?’"
RUN 3
ONE LAST CHANCE
“And I just feel like He (God) reminded me, ‘Hey, it doesn't matter what these people think of you, it doesn't matter what your result is at the end of the day, you're out here, you're doing this for me, this is your act of worship,’” David remembered as he landed his winning run.
TODAY
» DAVID WISE «
CHRISTIAN
HUSBAND & FATHER
PRO FREESTYLE SKIER
“It's really easy as a professional skier to get caught up in the need for success or to get caught up in money and contracts, and you know, appearances and all these things, it's really easy to lose sight of why I do this,” admitted David. “I’m in this because God made me the way He made me. So I'm constantly trying to remind myself, ‘This is my act of worship.’”
For more information on David (or to read his children’s book!) check out the links below:
