Team USA

After becoming one of the most decorated divers in U.S. history on the 10-meter platform, three-time Olympian and four-time Olympic medalist David Boudia’s transition to the 3-meter springboard is all but complete.

Boudia earned his 21st national title – his first on springboard since 2013 – at the USA Diving Senior National Championships, part of the Team USA Champions Series, presented by Xfinity, on Saturday in Indianapolis.

Boudia took time off following the Olympic Games Rio 2016 before announcing his return to the sport in September 2017. A concussion five months later would change his plans for a Tokyo 2020 bid from the platform to the springboard.

The 30-year-old father of three has since earned silver at the FINA Gold Coast Grand Prix last November, followed by a win at the Winter Trials and now a national title.

Boudia and Michael Hixon were the only Olympians in the field, and each showed his experience. Boudia won the national title with a total score of 474.35, followed by Hixon (451.00) and Jordan Windle (425.30).

Hixon won the top spot in the race for a world championship spot, cumulatively scoring 1,381.50 point over the three rounds of competition contested Thursday and Saturday, while Boudia checked in with a total of 1,358.05. Both men will compete for Team USA at the FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, in July.

After the first three dives in the final, the top three competitors were separated by less than 10 points; Hixon with 237.10, his synchro partner Andrew Capobianco with 235.40 and Boudia with 229.70.

Capobianco missed his fourth dive, a reverse 3 ½, earning just 31.50, virtually dropping him out of the race. Boudia, meanwhile, vaulted ahead of the field by 12 points (301.10) followed by Hixon (289.60).

Consistency over his final two dives kept Boudia in the driver’s seat. He closed out his title run with his best score of the day, an 89.25 on a reverse 3 ½, followed by an 84.00 on a reverse 1 ½, 3 ½ twist in his finale.

“Going into this event today, I don’t think I have been that nervous since 2005,” Boudia said. “I think because it is a new event on 3-meter, there are a lot more variables when it comes to diving – with trying to ride the board and have a rhythm. I am comfortable on 10-meter. I am not quite as comfortable on 3-meter yet, but this is a good stepping-stone to get into world championships and then ultimately toward Tokyo next year.”

Boudia noted that mentality was key in his success despite the ups and downs of other competitors.

“Nerves are good, you just have to learn how to put those butterflies in formation,” he said. “I think my rock has been my mental game and that is why I have been successful in this sport. It is just a matter of turning on that focus and getting into that zone and I guess that is what happened today. Having to step up for the occasion is what I love to do.”

Despite winning his second national title in 3-meter and first in six years, Boudia, who captured Olympic gold on the platform in 2012 and bronze in 2016, said he is not satisfied. 

“The caliber of diving here is a lot different than what the top four or five in the world are doing right now, so Hix and I are going to have a lot of training to do if we want to be even close to cracking that top five, but what we both have is experience,” Boudia said. “We both have been to the Olympics and been on the podium and we know what that feels like. And we know how to battle the pressure that comes with it. Ultimately, the goal of world championships is to bring back [Olympic] spots for the United States and I think Hixon and I are both in the position to do that. We just need to execute our plan.”

Yahoo!

Tatyana, alongside influencers and inspirational women such as Sarah Hyland, Andrea Pion, Angelique Miles, Shahd and Noelle Downing. The women have all participated in the two-week-long ‘Olay Body Wash Challenge’, using its ‘Ribbons’ body wash, and will also feature in a waterproof photography bath book to be published by the company.

Each of the women has chosen a different area of their body to be photographed: for McFadden, it was her arms.

Congratulations to David Boudia and wife, Sonnie, on the arrival of their third child, a baby boy!

U.S. Ski and Snowboard

With nine World Cup podiums, including three victories; two Olympic appearances and one crystal globe spanning his 12-year career, aerialist Mac Bohonnon (Madison, Conn.) has decided to hang up his proverbial U.S. Ski Team hat.

Although growing up in a beach town, Mac learned to ski at just eighteen-months-old. The Bohonnons were weekend warriors and would pile into their family Vermont home, along with Mac’s aunt and cousins, to ski Bromley Mountain. After progressing through the mountain’s ski school program, Mac started out in the Alpine program. “I really did not like it,” he reflected. “Although I think the issue was that I was always wearing hand-me-down speedsuits. They were either too tight or too loose.”

Freestyle came casually to Mac at first, he and his brother and cousin would build jumps in their backyard, over the road, on the side of ski runs (much to the chagrin of Bromley’s ski patrol) and would “do all of the things parents hate,” Mac said. When he was about six or seven, Mac remembers his brother and cousin participating in Bromley’s first freestyle program, started by Brian Knowles. “Naturally I wanted to do whatever they were doing,” he added. “I just fell in love with freestyle from there.”

During his time at Bromley, Mac skied everything: moguls, slopestyle and big air (the name then for upright aerials). He started competing regionally in southern Vermont and grew to love the jumping aspect of freestyle. Mac’s brother eventually went to the Holderness School in New Hampshire to ski with the Nick and Wes Preston. The Prestons ran a highly-regarded freestyle program, especially in aerials, and Mac began to go to their Freestyle America camps. He eventually made it to Lake Placid, N.Y., to jump in the pool when he was old enough (at age 12). It was in Lake Placid that Mac learned to do a backflip.

Mac was recruited by Dmitriy Kavunov, the aerials development coach at Lake Placid at the time, who ran a program that would eventually become the Elite Aerial Development Program (EADP), to move to Lake Placid in October 2008.

Mac joined a class of aerial skiers that included Ashley Caldwell (Ashburn, Va.), Jon Lillis (Pittsford, N.Y.), Mikey Rossi (Long Valley, N.J.), Kiley McKinnon (Madison, Conn.) and Alex Bowen (Springville, N.Y.) who would not only all become his teammates, but his family.

In the summer of 2011 Mac’s aerials career almost came to an end. “I sucked, honestly that’s the only way to put it,” he said. “I was growing like crazy, I think I grew four inches and gained about twenty-five pounds. And I was really crooked, which is not good in aerials.” Mac struggled through the summer, working on correcting his form, but then finding his body had changed again a month later. In September of that year Mac remembers Dmitriy sitting him down and telling him he might want to stick to moguls. “I had already committed to not going to school that year. It’s hard when your coach of three years tells you you’re not cut out and never going to be successful at your sport.” But timing can be everything, and around that same time, Eric Bergoust, new coach for the EADP, stepped in. “He saved my career hands down. Bergy took me on as a kind of project and worked tireless with me.” But the summer of 2011 would always linger with Mac, “I was always a little bit crooked and it was something I always had to work on.”

Mac lived and trained in Lake Placid for four and a half years before he was recruited to the national team at age 16. Although resistant at first, Mac moved to Park City full time the summer of 2012.

Mac was unexpectedly shot into the spotlight during the 2013-14 season, the season he describes as “mind-blowing.” He recalls, “I did my first triples on snow in December 2013, and competed in the Olympics that next February.” Mac and his coach at the time, Joe Davies, had made the conscious decision together to work on fundamentals and stick to harder, double jumps, rather than go for triples during the 2012-13 season. Instead of gunning for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, they would focus on becoming the best for the four years following Sochi, leading into the 2018 PyeongChang Games.

“I had no expectations of going or competing in Sochi,” Mac says. “There were six guys on World Cup that season and I was not one of them. I don’t even think I had any World Cup starts that season.” But fate had other plans and after winning the first two Nor-Am events of the season, Mac earned two World Cup starts for the domestic stops at Deer Valley and Lake Placid – two of the three Olympic qualifying events. The third qualifying event was the Val St. Come World Cup in Quebec, Canada. “It was Friday night: Deer Valley, Tuesday: Canada and then Saturday: Lake Placid. One of the national team members had hurt themselves and bowed out of the Canada event. So at midnight before the team left for Canada, I got the call and bought a ticket.” Mac finished second in Val St. Come, the only podium for the men that year.

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