Vancouver snowboarder Johnny
Lyall's life changed last Friday, February 12th, in a matter of 20
seconds or so: exactly how long it took him to jump through the Olympic rings
at the Olympics opening ceremony and welcome the world to Vancouver to a global
audience of millions.
Since that pivotal moment,
everyone seems to want a piece of Johnny (or J-Bone, as he's known to his
friends). He's been interviewed by dozens of media outlets from around the
world, and has gone from low to high profile over night - literally. We caught
up with Johnny for a beer at the Oakley "safe house" in Vancouver's Yaletown
neighbourhood, where we sat down to talk about his big moment, and all of the
hard work (and one pivotal coin toss) that went into it.
So how many of these have you done now?
Five or six a day... I'm
starting to get good at it, I think. Or at least they're telling me I'm getting
good at it! [laughs]
What are some of the media outlets you've spoken to?
The CTV, CBC, NBC... I did one
for NBC online and they said they expected a million hits on it! And then
E-Talk and some shows like that.
Tell me about how the whole thing started. I know it
was you and Shin Campos and Kevin Sansalone, but how did that first phone call
reach you to do this?
It was Karl Fuhre, from IS
Eyewear, who told me about an audition for a commercial. I thought it was odd
that only a few of us showed up to the audition; but they only wanted three
people and Shin and Kevin and I got it. And then they told us what it was for
and we were like, "Oh, shit!"
Wow...
They thought we'd say, "Yes,
yes, yes!" But we were worried about how it would portray snowboarding, so they
were surprised that we were reluctant at first.
You didn't want it to be kooky...
Exactly. We could've become
the laughing stock of snowboarding! So they were surprised we almost said no.
But the producer, David Atkins, really listened to what we said and let us
consult on tons of things to make sure it was what we wanted, as much as
possible.
We did the snowboard edit
with me and Sans and Shin and David Aubry. We did that at Mike Wiegele's, and
then they built a tabletop jump at Seventh Heaven on Blackcomb with me and
Benji Ritchie to get more jump shots. And then we did another shoot on Whistler
for the maple leaf part of the video. The also built a replica of the jump from
BC Place in Whistler so we could practice on it. Initially they wanted us to
land on an air bag, but it was lame... we didn't want to do that. There was no
way.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette photo.
No kidding... there's not a lot of dignity in that kind
of landing.
Yeah, right... so we changed
that into a real landing, but it still took some work. And then once we had it
set up and started to try it out, Sans got broke off when he caught his edge.
And the whole time, you couldn't talk about it.
We weren't allowed to say
anything about it! People started to figure out a few things, but we didn't say
much about it.
So it came down to you and Shin in the end?
Yes, once Kevin got hurt it
was just us. And we'd been training on the jump every day for weeks, but all in
secret. They didn't want anyone to know about it, so we were practicing every
at GM Place when no one was there to see it. And it came down to the show
producer saying he didn't know who to pick because we were both jumping and
landing it so well, so did we want to flip a coin?
Damn!
Yeah, we had joked about
that: that it would come down to the toss of a coin. It was intense. He [the
producer] said he could pick one of us, but it would be arbitrary. So he flipped
the coin and I won.
Canadian Press photo.
And that's history... how gripped were you when you
dropped in?
So gripped! I was just
focused on the air and the landing. And you have to ride on the stuff - the
surface of the jump they used - a bit differently. So I was just thinking
on the jump and not thinking about anything else... you can't think about the
audience there at GM Place and on TV; you just can't swallow that pill. It's
too much.
You nailed it. But if you fell it would've sucked! It
would've have gone from the best moment to the worst moment.
I would've had to leave
town! Where no one knew what snowboarding was... or the Olympics. It would've
been brutal. I can't even imagine what that would've been like, and of course
those thoughts went into my head. I did a bad jump at practice and I thought
about it for 24 hours... so I am glad that it worked out and that it portrayed
snowboarding well, and that the snowboard industry was stoked about it.
Well the video was really good... and you nailed the
jump. It was blown away, to be honest.
It was done right, and we
were stoked on it. I think people are looking at it as a milestone for
snowboarding now. It was such an honour for me. And I've heard so many nice
things... people saying they're proud of me and that I represented Canada. It's
just so cool that I was attached to that.
What do you think it might lead to?
I don't know... I am just
doing tons of media stuff. Everyone knows that someone jumped through the rings, but other than snowboard people,
no one knows who I am. So doing all of the media will maybe help attach me to
that. It might lead to things for me, but we'll see.
Maybe you can be hired to jump through things...
Yeah, I'll jump through
hoops - literally! [laughs] That could be my new career. So much good stuff has
come out of it already that I'm incredibly happy about it. So if this is it -
and this is all that comes of it - that's fine with me.
Amateur video of Johnny's jump:
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Related:
Sansalone's Whitegold
8 Mile: A Life Worth Living
Inside Out: 8 Mile (video)