When Jaelin Kauf zipped through moguls and jumps to win two world freestyle skiing titles this winter, she was far from the cowbells, gluhwein, chocolate and other slopeside paraphernalia that speckles historic European ski venues.
She skidded to a stop March 1 at the bottom of Kazakhstan’s Shymbulak Mountain Resort, a central Asian slope on the other side of the globe from her hometown of Alta, Wyoming. With two more races still on her international schedule, Kauf had just beaten Japan’s Rino Yanagimoto in the dual moguls event and secured the season’s crystal globe trophy for that discipline.
In besting Yanagimoto, she had also accumulated the most points for the season in both mogul events — the head-to-head duals and the single-skier competitions.
Her phone started buzzing.
“I was texting my parents … checking,” she said. “They said, ‘you also just secured the overall.’”
Kauf couldn’t believe it.
“Are you sure?” she texted back. “Are you positive? I don’t want to believe it or say anything if it’s not actually true.”
“My mom taught us how to do 360s off a catwalk.”
Jaelin Kauf
It was all true, but only half the season’s story. Within a couple of weeks, Kauf went on to Livigno, Italy, to win the freestyle single’s globe and then to fabled St. Moritz, Switzerland, to win the duals medal in the world Championships.
All those points, globes and medals might be as confusing to flatlanders as a mogul field is to an intermediate skier, but they shake out to simple truths.
Wyoming’s Jaelin Kauf, 28, dominates the freestyle moguls circuit. She won an unprecedented American crystal globe hat trick on the International Ski Federation tour this winter. She won the 2025 dual mogul world championship and is headed to next season’s Olympics in Cortina, Italy, where she hopes to add gold to her 2022 Beijing silver.
360s at the ’Ghee
Born in Vail, Colorado, to parents who skied on the pro mogul circuit, Kauf and her family moved to Alta and Grand Targhee Resort when she was three. Moguls — German for “small hills” — didn’t suit her at first. But she was determined to follow her older brother Skyler through the obstacles.
Then came mother Patti.
“My mom taught us how to do 360s off a catwalk or [by] just hitting road jumps or things around the mountain,” she said.
Skiers have long tested one another by racing down smooth courses and between gates set tightly for slalom and farther apart for giant slalom and downhill. Moguls were mine fields where grooming machines and racers didn’t venture.
That’s until the 1970s when Canadian Wayne Wong donned his white-rimmed mirror shades, got in the back seat and twisted his way through bumps in a new, expressive style — hot-dogging. Wong even incorporated a flip, the Wong-banger, into a bag of tricks that catapulted him onto posters found above many ski tuning benches across North America.
Today’s freestyle competition requires racing through manufactured snow moguls and over two kickers that enable skiers to perform aerial acrobatics. Judges rank competitors on time, style and form. In duals, skiers race side by side.
Kauf’s hometown hill, Grand Targhee, is blessed with snow and even moguls, but it’s not a mecca for budding aerialists. Kauf’s best simulation was on a trampoline. By the time she entered high school, the family had moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
That town is home to storied Howelsen Hill, a rare natural ski-jumping venue. Building on that heritage, the town also created one of the few American ski water ramps where athletes can practice aerial maneuvers in summer above a safe landing.
With aerials under her belt, Kauf in 2016 earned the rookie of the year title on the World Cup tour. Since then, she’s bumped and jumped her way to glory.
She has 16 World Cup victories, 50 World Cup podiums, a World Championships gold medal, seven U.S. Championship titles, and an Olympic silver medal. Along with Breezy Johnson, this year’s world champion downhill and team combined alpine champion who calls Jackson Hole Mountain Resort home, Kauf has again elevated Wyoming to the top of the world podium.
On to Cortina
At the culmination of Kauf’s season in St. Moritz, her family — mother Patti, stepfather Squeak Melehes, father Scott and stepmother Muffy Mead-Ferro — joined a smallish band of spectators and fans. Freestyle hasn’t captured the Europeans as completely as downhill and slalom, events in which stars bask in as much limelight as NFL quarterbacks do in the U.S. Nevertheless, “the locals or people free skiing would definitely stop and check out the event and see what’s going on,” Kauf said.
Regardless of the immediate audience, Kauf has been on the largest sports platform, including competing at two Olympics. In Beijing, even though COVID clouded her experience, the Olympic aura shone through.
“I got to walk out in opening ceremonies and perform on that stage,” she said. “It was still the Olympics.”
Kauf visited China again this year when Beidahu hosted a moguls event and where she found welcoming hosts. “They are very excited to have us there,” she said. “Everyone was really friendly and nice.”
She’s now focused on Cortina, which last hosted the winter Olympics in 1956. The coming games offer a double chance — individual and the duals medals.
“It’s not just focusing on that singles run,” she said. “You have to think about duals strategy as well.”
She’s eyeing “a very clean, zipper line right down the middle … hoping to bring in a bit higher degree of difficulty into my jumps.”
Wyoming will be there with her. Kauf wears “Deliver the Love,” on the back of her helmet, “Grand Targhee” on the front. In her gear bag, she said, she’s even got “a few brown and gold things.”