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When Abi Strate imagines making her first jump at Milano Cortina, she doesn’t try to conjure the feeling of her skis on the ramp, or gravity picking up her speed, or her launch into the air, those first fateful seconds of flight. She imagines lifting her head and taking in the view.
“I know I’m in a good space when I notice everything around me,” she said. “If nothing else goes right today, I saw something beautiful.”
Strate, 24, started ski jumping at six at her home in Calgary. “Before I even knew what ski jumping was, I was always looking up at those towers,” she said. “That’s one of my earliest memories.” She wanted to know how it felt to stand on top of the world.
Little by little, she worked her way up. She had reached the top of the Olympic hills by the time she was 12. “Every time you went up jump sizes, it was like a leap of faith. I was always, get on and go. I just went straight away. When I was younger, I didn’t have any fear.”
At 17, she had her first bad crash. She hit her head and blew up her knee. She had to start working with a psychologist for the first time, fighting to regain the limitlessness she had lost. She suffered two more heavy crashes in 2024 and didn’t give herself enough time to recover — the mental damage more significant and lasting than the physical pain.
“I was completely terrified of jumping,” she said. “I was not nearly in the right place.”
Certain factors — the wind feeling a foreboding way, the quality of the snow — derailed her routines, which were usually focussed on finding faith in her training and her equipment, preparing her nerves away. Ski jumping demands that you find and ride the leading edge of your limits. She was too controlled, more worried than hopeful, more restrained than compelled.
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