LIVIGNO, Italy — Every Winter Olympic event seemingly requires, at some point along the way, an athlete to decide whether he or she is willing to go farther. Is he crazy enough to try that next dangerous trick? Is she devoted enough to risk hurting herself?
In women’s ski aerials, two ramps sit with a large decision in between them. The ramps are called “kickers.” The double kicker sends the skier about 30 feet into the air and requires two flips along with an array of twists and wild acrobatics. A triple kicker, taller and steeper, sends the skier about 50 feet up. If you take the triple, you have to execute three flips.
This brings us to 22-year-old Kaila Kuhn.
The U.S. Olympic aerial skier ended Wednesday afternoon with her face stuffed in her mother’s shoulder, letting it all out as China’s national anthem played behind her and three other women stood on the podium.
Kuhn was and is a prodigious athlete, the kind who was a gifted gymnast at 12 years old, transitioned her focus solely to skiing, moved from her home in Boyne City, Mich., to the Lake Placid U.S. Olympic Ski Jumping Complex in upstate New York, ended up in her first World Championships at only 15, and her first Olympics at 18.
Kuhn finished eighth in Beijing 2022. She faced no expectations. She was happy to be there.
As it does, time changes perspective. After Beijing, the Milan Cortina Games went from being a far-off dot on an unpublished calendar to the be-all, end-all in Kuhn’s world.
The problem was the triple kicker.
Little by little in recent years, the best women’s aerial skiers in the world shifted from exclusively using the double to taking their chance with the triple. The degree of difficulty is so much higher that judges’ rulings inherently boost scorers for three flips. Over time, it has become a growing reality that you cannot and will not medal in the world championships or the Olympics without leaning into the triple kicker.
Kuhn was, in her words, “paralyzed with fear.” The jump was too steep, too high, too dangerous. She was not only attempting a far more dangerous jump, but doing so amid the transition from free-wheeling kid to an adult who understands consequences. From prodigious to skittish, just like that. Kuhn feared both injury and failure, a double dose that drowned her in doubt.
She began attempting triples in 2023 and soon found herself at a breaking point. Not just mentally, but physically. Turns out, it hurts to ski 40 miles per hour down a ramp, fly 50 feet in the air and slam onto a sidehill of crunchy snow.
“I was losing a lot of faith in myself because I was just crashing over and over again,” Kuhn said in a conversation during training prior to the Games. “For some reason, I just wasn’t able to fix what I was trying to fix. I was, like, consumed by trying to survive instead of actually focusing on how to improve.”
As she spoke, Kuhn seemed to go back to that time and place. She winced, remembering thinking that her time in the sport was fading to black.
“It was really hard for me to find my feet,” she continued, “and so my body was taking a beating, as were my results. I was definitely starting to think, like, ‘Hey, I guess my peak in this sport was doubles.’ I was trying to come to terms with that.”
Kaila Kuhn finished fifth in the women’s aerials in Milan Cortina. (Cameron Spencer / Getty Images)
With no other resort, Kuhn set out to change the wiring.
She tried sports psychology. She tried visualization techniques. She meditated. She did breathwork. She journaled.
All had benefits.
But then came hypnosis.
From the other side of the world, Dr. Stella Nkenke, a professor at the University of Vienna and vice chair of the International Society of Hypnosis, has been putting Kuhn into a state of trance about once a month for over a year and half.
All along, since starting on her quest to land triples, Kuhn had unquestionably had the ability. She knows so because she’s done so. Nkenke set out to train her brain to understand that her good jumps are normal ones, not the anomalies. That fear — Kuhn’s obsession — had to be repackaged. Nkenke worked with her to stop trying to hide from her fear, but instead keep it and harness it.
“We don’t get to fight against fear,” Nkenke said over coffee near the Livigno Aerials & Moguls Park. “We have to integrate it and know that other people are full of fear as well. You want to think you’re the only one. Fear can be very good because it has a power of concentration.”
Reframing her compulsions and anxieties swung the doors of Kuhn’s mind wide open. She and Nkenke worked to visualize her at the end of successful jumps instead of the jump itself. They worked on techniques for approaching each jump from the top of the ramp.
Nkenke became Kuhn’s primary touch point on the mental side of the game.
“Hypnosis is not about information, it’s about experience,” Nkenke said, “an unconscious experience where you feel, yes I can do it,”
Results followed. At the 2025 FIS Freestyle Ski World Championships in Switzerland, Kuhn became the first aerial skier to win two golds (individual and the team event) at a single World Championship. She landed two beautiful triples along the way, one in each competition.
“I finally got to this point where I am able to stare at this ice wall and not jump out of my skin,” Kuhn said.
Kaila Kuhn falls during her final run in Livigno. (Cameron Spencer / Getty Images)
Among the finalists to advance through the qualifying cutoffs — from 25 to 12 to 6 — in Wednesday’s aerials competition, the best of the best all ripped massive jumps off the triple kickers, spinning and flipping like human pinwheels. In the first of two jumps before the final cut to six, Kuhn’s feet came out from under her on landing. Her back slammed on the snow and a modest 87.0 score flashed on the screen.
Kuhn’s chances at medaling rested on her next jump. She opted to go back full-full-full, one of the most daunting tricks in women’s aerials — three backflips, each with a full 360 twist. Stomping the landing, she pumped both fists in the air.
She did what she had set out to do.
But sports can be unforgiving. The finals in aerials amount to one jump by the last six women standing. No scores carry over. One jump for everything. Again, Kuhn went back full-full-full.
The jump was clean, the flips were clean, the landing was not. Kuhn compressed, smacking her face on her knee, before getting upright. It was clear immediately there would be no medal. Her score of 99.16 finished fifth, a slight improvement on four years ago.
“Gut-wrenching,” she said later.
Kuhn didn’t get what she came for. As the medal ceremony went on without her, Kuhn said she was happy there was another chance for some hardware — the aerials mixed team event on Saturday — but that this disappointment will take a long time to get over.
She’s going to keep hitting that triple kicker, no matter what. She said fear is hers to keep.
“It’s always there,” Kuhn said. “That’s life.”