Park City transplant Bryon Wilson is still grinning ear to ear with his recent success at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Game. Wilson, who was born in Montana and moved to Utah to train with the U.S. Ski Team, won Olympic bronze in the men’s moguls competition Sunday night.

"It's been a pretty amazing ride," said Wilson following his third place showing. "A year ago, I was just trying to make the Olympics. When I was down there [in the finish area] after my run, I knew I had a big one and a good score. It was amazing."

Wilson’s path to the Olympics wasn’t an easy one but one born of hard work and opportunity. The Olympic Team is selected based on competition results from the current winter season with the qualifying period ending weeks prior to the Olympics. He started the season a member of the B Team, similar to junior varsity, he was not assured World Cup starts for the competitions that would determine his Olympic fate. However, opportunity knocked when a fellow teammate injured himself and could not compete at the opening World Cup competitions in Suomu, Finland last December. He was called up to the Majors so to speak and the 21-year old proved to his coaches that while the Team was deep with talent, he was a wise pick. He took second place at both competitions that weekend and shortly thereafter was promoted to the A Team. He continued to be competitive the remainder of the qualifying period shoring up an Olympic berth and a trip to his first Olympics.

Wilson’s story is similar to Olympian Travis Mayer (Steamboat Springs, CO) who started the 2002 season on the C Team and ended it with an Olympic silver medal from the Salt Lake City Games.

With a bronze medal around his neck you would think Wilson would take the rest of the season off. That’s not the case as he told KSL’s Amanda Butterfield.

"I go straight from here to Japan, to Sweden, to Spain, so I don't go home until the end of March," he said.

The Westminster College student will have a busy summer training and preparing for the 2011 season that includes Freestyle World Championships, the biggest event outside of the Olympics, that will take place at Utah’s Deer Valley Resort in February 2011. In addition, Wilson also will be working on a backlog of fish wood carvings, his business that has helped him earn extra money to support his ski career. He has won awards with this talent as well.

Freestyle Skiing Medal Tradition Continues
The U.S. Freestyle Moguls Ski Team has medaled at every Olympic Games since the freestyle discipline made its debut at the 1992 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

1992 – gold – Donna Weibrecht, who was on-site working for Yahoo! Sports
          – bronze – Nelson Carmichael
1994 – silver – Liz McIntyre
1998 – gold – Jonny Moseley, who also was on site working for NBC Olympics
2002 – silver – Shannon Bahrke
          – silver – Travis Mayer
2006 – bronze – Toby Dawson
2010 – gold – Hannah Kearney
          – bronze – Shannon Bahrke
          – bronze – Bryon Wilson
 

More info: Teamusa.org, vancouver2010.com, usskiteam.com