SPECIAL SECTION/CANADA'S TEAM/FREESTYLE SKIING	FEBRUARY 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 4
	Breaths of Fresh Air Aerialist Nicolas Fontaine, with mogul magus Jean-Luc Brassard and their peers, could very well blow away all the competition in Japan By DAVE STUBBS kiing recklessly down a mountainside at age 12, Nicolas Fontaine learned the cost of being a daredevil. "I couldn't see over a jump, but I jumped it anyway--right into a school of little kids who were taking a class," Fontaine says, grinning at the memory. "I missed the kids, but I hit the teacher." The adult grabbed the ski-tow pass off Fontaine's jacket. That was the end of skiing that day for the Magog, Que., native. Presumably, Fontaine never clobbered any more teachers. As he heads to Nagano 15 years later, the wild kid is freestyle skiing's world aerials champion. He is also the leader of the acrobatic "Canadian Air Force," six highflyers who will compete in Nagano alongside seven equally lunatic moguls skiers, including defending Olympic and world champion Jean-Luc Brassard. Neither discipline is for the weak-kneed. The mogulists will bounce and bob down a 25-degree Japanese mountainside incline, slicing through a 250-m layout of bumps, twice leaping wildly to be judged on the quality of turns, "air" (the amount under their skis) and speed. The aerialists will hurl themselves twice off steep ramps, flipping and twisting while they are marked on air, form and landing. At the 1997 world championships, also held at Nagano, Fontaine was on a plane of his own. He nailed two triple-somersaulting, quadruple-twisting jumps to finish first. He had been working toward that honor since age 5, when he first put on skis in Magog, 100 km southeast of Montreal. Over the next few years, he says, "I was a little crazy, jumping out of trees to ski, jumping over cliffs on a motorcycle, but I never thought of freestyle." That changed at age 10, when he saw a trampoline exhibition by aerialist Lloyd Langlois at a Montreal amusement park. Langlois was a legend in Magog, one of the finest freestylers the world had seen. Soon Fontaine had built a jump behind his house and was crashing into a gravel pit before his father added a landing hill. Fontaine became a disciple of Langlois's and fellow Quebeckers Jean-Marc Rozon and Philippe LaRoche. The trio are hugely talented freestylers who since 1985 have won five Olympic medals, four world championships, seven World Cup Grand Prix crowns and eight national titles. Fontaine found the company almost intimidating. He took second place behind LaRoche at the 1992 Albertville Games and came in sixth, far behind LaRoche and Langlois, at the Lillehammer Olympics. It wasn't until LaRoche retired in 1995 that the younger skier came into his own. While Fontaine now provides experience, Canada's aerials team at Nagano will feature a new generation of fresh faces. Jeff Bean, 20, of Ottawa; Andy Capicik, 24, of Toronto; and David Belhumeur, 27, of Pierrefonds, Que., have all demonstrated nerves of steel and great potential. Among the women, Veronica Brenner, 23, a superb but cautious athlete from Sharon, Ont., was last season's overall World Cup champion. Caroline Olivier, 26, of Cap-Rouge, Que., a former gymnast who narrowly missed a berth on Canada's 1988 Olympic team, jumped to two World Cup victories last season. Mogulist Brassard, 25, is a cult hero in Japan. Winning in Lillehammer in 1994 has not dulled his competitive edge or his romantic fervor. "There is still the thrill of going somewhere I haven't been before," he says, "to see how deep you can reach inside yourself to achieve your dreams." He grew up in the remote Quebec village of Grand-Ile and despised skiing the first time he tried it. But before long, the seven-year-old was entertaining weekend crowds by swirling about beneath chairlifts, a cyclone on skis. Brassard spent hours on a trampoline to polish his acrobatics and finally took up freestyle because, he says, "I've always been a bit of a showman. So it had perfect appeal." Judges agree it was a good move on his part. Going into this season, Brassard had won two world championships, 16 World Cup events and three World Cup titles. Yet he remains pleasantly awkward when asked for an autograph. "I'm just a grownup kid, and I don't ever want that to change," he says. "Is there anything wrong with wanting to see through the eyes of a child?" Brassard's easygoing nature may be immutable, but his approach to the sport has varied a lot. During the off-season, he added weight training to his regimen and begged out of many of the exhausting moguls clinics he normally conducts for youngsters. He's honed an additional high-scoring jump for his 25-sec. banzai run. His toughest competition will most likely come from fellow Canadians. Since Lillehammer, runner-up Edgar Grospiron of France has retired, while Russian Sergei Shupletsov, the bronze medalist, died in an automobile accident in 1995. The tragedy leaves open the possibility of an all-Canadian sweep. Brassard will be pushed hard by Stephane Rochon, 23, of St. Sauveur, Que.; Ryan Johnson, 23, of Calgary; and Dominick Gauthier, 24, of Levis, Que. Ann-Marie Pelchat, 23, of Levis, a three-time national champion, should pace the women, who include Josee Charbonneau, 25, of Bellefeuille, Que., and Tami Bradley, 27, of Vancouver. Pelchat enjoyed five top-15 World Cup finishes last season and spent the spring doing construction work to prepare for an intense summer of dry-land training. At the worlds in Nagano last year, Canadians won seven medals. There is no guarantee of similar triumphs, of course, at the Games. But "we expect success," says Peter Judge, Canada's coach for the past 15 years. Says aerialist Fontaine: "These are the Olympics. How can I not get psyched?"
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