For the last two and a half years, any time Alex Ferreira has looked at his phone, he’s been greeted with the same lock screen.
On it are a list of six goals. Most of the objectives are things any average person might have on their own list: buy a house in Aspen; buy a rental income property; create merchandise around his business venture (in this case, his popular “Hot Dog Hans” YouTube series); get that business funded; find a “beautiful, normal” girlfriend.
At the very top of the list, below a photo of him holding an American flag at the 2018 Olympics, is a goal that’s more unique to him: “Win the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina.”
So far, Ferreira has checked off four of the six goals. In February, he’ll try to cross off one more.
This will be the Aspen, Colorado native’s 15th season competing on the pro circuit in freeski halfpipe. He’s already racked up many of the sport’s biggest accolades, including three X Games gold medals and three World Cup halfpipe titles, but the biggest piece of hardware missing from his bedroom wall is an Olympic gold medal.
The upcoming Milan Cortina Games will likely be his final shot at adding that long-awaited Olympic gold to the collection. He’s brought back a medal from each of his two Olympic appearances thus far — silver in 2018, bronze in 2022 — but the desire to win gold has been driving him these last few years.
It's a focus that's grown over the course of his career.
“When you're younger and coming up in your career, there's so many different things going on that you're not able to think about just winning,” he said. “Now that I've been in, I don't even know how many contests in my life, I can actually focus on just trying to win. And now that I have the previous results to back that framework up, I think it's easier to believe in myself and to do that.”
Ferreira has always been competitive — “If we were young kids playing ping-pong, I wanted to win the ping-pong game just as much as I wanted to win X Games when I was 18,” he says — but over the last three years, he’s become even more serious and more laser-focused on his Olympic objective.
At age 31, Ferreira is now one of the older competitors in the field, but he hasn't slowed down at all. In fact, he says he's training harder than ever before.
“You do start to feel it a little bit more [at this age],” he said. “You feel the soreness, and it's a little harder to get out of bed, and it's a little harder to put the left sock on, whatever it is. But as I've gotten older, I've only ramped up, and now we're pretty much in one of the final chapters, so might as well just go all-in.”
Ferreira puts in a lot of time at the gym and on the bike these days. He also uses a whole host of different therapies: chiropractic, massage, cryogenic, hyperbaric, red light — you name it. “Anything and everything that you can think of, I'm doing,” he said.
It’s hard to argue with the results, as Ferreira has been skiing better than ever during this Olympic cycle. Windy conditions at Beijing 2022 forced him to abandon his plan to add a second double cork 1620 to his run, but a year later, he achieved his long-held goal of landing a run that included 1620s in both directions. That breakthrough helped power him to an undefeated season in which he won all seven halfpipe contests he entered during the 2023-24 campaign.
It was a historic achievement that wouldn’t have happened had Ferreira listened to some people in his circle who suggested retirement in 2023 after a series of injuries and hard crashes.
But just as Ferreira was establishing himself as the clear Olympic favorite, a new crop of rivals emerged last season. Fellow American Nick Goepper won X Games after switching to halfpipe from slopestyle, and New Zealand’s Fin Melville Ives won the world championships. Another New Zealander, 17-year-old Luke Harrold, is on the rise right now.
To win gold, Ferreira may need to upgrade his run, and he’s been building an arsenal of new tricks that would help him do that.
To start, he’s been working on landing switch double cork 1440s in both directions. His optimal run last season included two switch 1080s, so either hit could potentially be upgraded to a 1440.
Then there’s the double cork 1800, a trick which has never been landed in competition but was first attempted by Ferreira two seasons ago.
“That's the plan: to do it at the Olympics,” he said of the 1800. “Why not?”
Thanks to his results last season, Ferreira has already locked down his spot on the U.S. Olympic freeski halfpipe team for Milan Cortina. He fully expects this to be his final Olympics, though he hasn’t made any official retirement plans yet and will continue to keep his options open for now.
“Maybe if I feel great and I'm healthy and strong, we'll continue forward, but we'll see,” said Ferreira, who would be 35 by the time the 2030 Games in the French Alps arrive.
Regardless of when Ferreira officially calls it quits, he’s already built a legacy for himself with years of consistent contest results. He’s still evolved a lot since those early days, though, particularly on the mental side of the sport.
The biggest changes?
“I used to worry a lot, and that would affect some of the training regimen,” he said, “Now, I just train as hard as I can, and I worry a little bit less.
“And then on top of that, being able to visualize something and see it and tell yourself it's happened before it's happened. For me, that was a difficult conviction to have, but now it's a much easier belief because I've seen it work so many times now.”
What hasn’t changed is the way he feels when it’s time to drop in for a halfpipe run.
“The contests feel exactly the same way that I felt when I was 10 years old,” he said. “I still feel the nerves, I still feel the roller coaster of emotions, I'm scared, I want to do well, I'm excited — all of the above.”
As it has been for years, the best adjective to describe those runs might be “electric.” Ferreira’s jaw-dropping amplitude gives his runs an exciting energy, and his enthusiasm is always evident. Whenever you see him swing his poles in celebration after a run, you know he’s stoked about whatever he just landed.
Even now in his 15th season, he’s been able to keep that same enthusiasm alive, in part by changing up his routines to keep things from getting stale.
“Certainly there are times where you feel like you don't want to be doing what is in front of you,” he said. “Nobody loves their job 100% of the time, but I am very grateful most of the time. We do have a lot of fun, and I'm around a lot of wonderful people in some of the most amazing places.”
Ferreira’s season will begin with the U.S. Grand Prix at Copper Mountain, which starts Dec. 18. It's the first of several events he could potentially enter leading into February’s high-stakes Olympic showdown in Livigno, something that he's eagerly anticipating.
“I think going into these Olympics, maybe there's a little bit less pressure off of me because I've already been there twice before," he said. "I know how the fiasco of the Olympics works and all these things. So I'm actually really looking forward to it.”
Something else Ferreira is looking forward to? Finally changing that lock screen. He’d like to replace the current image with one from the Milan Cortina Games — after he wins a gold medal there, of course.
“I have a silver, I have a bronze,” he said. “Now it's time to complete the set.”
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