STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Jonna Mendes loved the feeling of standing in the starting gate looking at a downhill course.

“You’re standing there with the mountain completely to yourself, knowing no one else on the run, that it’s as safe as it’s going to get.”

Mendes, who retired from ski racing in 2006, won’t be racing in the 2025 Audi FIS World Cup Finals, which kick off with downhill training today at Sun Valley Resort. She’ll instead be among hundreds of volunteers on the course crew, making sure the top 25 men and top 26 women downhillers from around the world can test themselves on a course without so much as a wrinkle in it.

But the Sun Valley Olympian has raced in more than a hundred World Cup Races, taking her own turn on the podium when she won a bronze medal in Super G at the 2003 World Championships in St. Moritz.

At the top of the alpine ski racing world for 20 years, she’s a four-time national champion in downhill and giant slalom. One of those national downhill titles came at Mammoth Mountain  in 2005 where she beat Julia Mancuso and Caroline Lalive.

“It was perfect, surrounded by family and friends and coaches who had watched me since I was 6,” said Mendes, now the director of the Sun Valley Ski Academy, which embraces as many as 80 students from around the world for academics and ski racing.

A two- time Olympian, she just missed the top 10 at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics while posting the best run among American women. Never mind that she was racing 94 miles on skis three inches wide.

“It didn’t feel that fast,” she said. “It’s only when you make big turns that it feels scary.”

Mendes grew up in South Lake Tahoe where she started skiing at 3 at Heavenly Ski Resort. At 6 she joined the race team and the highly competitive little girl found success right away.

“I went around the gates a couple times and I loved it. It’s what the big kids did and, when you’re little, you want to do what the big kids do,” she said.

At 13 Mendes was one of six American boys and girls chosen to represent the United States at international competition in Italy.

“I had no idea what I was capable of and ended up fourth in the Giant Slalom. That’s when I realized I might be pretty good,” she said.

She raced her first downhill at 15 at Jackson Hole on men’s Giant Slalom skis. And at 17 she ran her first World Cup—the Super G--at World Championships in Austria.

Her wax technician spent all night grinding, waxing and scraping wax off her skis, she recounted. And they were tuned so well that they ran away with her, her speed cranking from 50 miles per hour to 120.

“I couldn’t keep up with them. I was flying” she said

She had a huge crash, her helmet flying off. But the safety nets spared her from serious injury.

Over the years, Mendes recounted, she and her teammates participated in a variety of cross-training and confidence-building exercises, including climbing to the top of cliffs and tiptoeing across balance beams.

It was at the top of a high dive, staring at the pool below, that she came face to face with fear.

“The U.S. Ski Team coaches would take us cross-country skiing, partly to make us more athletic, partly to make us uncomfortable. The idea was to teach us that we were capable of more than we thought,” she said. “For me, the high dive was terrifying—I’d never do that again.”

Mendes was there when Sun Valley Olympian Picabo Street won gold at Nagano. And she likes to think she played a part in it.

“I rode the chair up with her prior to the race and she had been doing well but not incredibly well. I said, ‘Picabo, I really think you can do it today. I really feel this could be yours.’ To be there to see her win an Olympic medal, much as I wished it for myself, was unbelievable. To see it all come together on one day, for one run--”

Street took Mendes under her wing, talking tactics, which is not something all their highly competitive teammates did. They inspected race courses together, and Street radioed course conditions to her younger teammate.

“She also taught me how to be confident. Picabo had more confidence than anyone I know—she thought she was the best—and some of that rubbed off on me,” Mendes said.

The cool thing about the Sun Valley course is that it’s never been run by any of the contenders who will stand in the starting gate on Saturday.

Many of the men and women have run the other World Cup downhill courses. But the Sun Valley downhill was created over the summer as bulldozers pushed dirt around and crews felled trees per FIS specifications.

“We watched the trees come down. We watched the Greyhawk lot fill with logs. But none of the athletes have run it,” she added.

Mendes said the course will favor technical skiers.

“There’s nowhere to sleep. Wax won’t be as much a factor as the body. The athletes need to consider how they need to be more dynamic, more active.”

The ski racers will have their first chance to try the course today with the men training at 11 a.m. and the women at 12:30 p.m. (you can watch for free from the Greyhawk base area). The Women’s Downhill Training will resume at 11 a.m. Friday, March 21, followed by the Men’s at 12:30 p.m.

Mendes said she spent hours visualizing a course after her training runs. She became so skilled she could time herself to know exactly when she needed to be to a certain part of the course if she was to win.

“I couldn’t always execute, but I knew where I should be at a certain time. Not all World Cup racers can do that.”

Mende was also able to slow down the process as she skied.

“We’re looking gates ahead, not at the snow in front of us.”

Mendes was well known for her enthusiastic yell before charging down a course. But, she says, she was sometimes scared.

“And that was okay. You’re nervous a lot of the time and fearful a lot of the time. You can harness it and use it or let it eat you alive. I’d think to myself about how much work I had put in and how well I knew the course. You have to overcome to win.”

Mendes called the World Cup’s newest course “mean.”

“Those racing the Super G at the National Alpine championships last year had trouble navigating the Steilhang. Racers are going to have to slow down, make some turns in that area. Probably some big long turns off of International to slow down enough.”

While she prefers the snow in the United States to that of Europe, Mendes relished being regarded as a superstar in Europe.

“I once stopped for gas and found no attendants to take my money,” she said. “They were busy watching the World Cup.”