Words & photos by Rocky Maloney

Dylan Ferguson started his early skiing career in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, and quickly gained skills within the sport and found himself on the US Aerials Team. Ferguson then moved out to Park City, Utah in 2006 to progress his skills at the Utah Olympic Sports Park. He was selected for the 2010 Olympic Team, but a week before he was set to leave for Vancouver he suddenly came down with appendicitis, and had to have his appendix removed immediately. After it was removed it got a small infection, and he had to have a tube placed into his stomach to remove it. As a result he was unfortunately unable to attend the Olympics and friend and fellow team member Scotty Bahrke took his spot.

Following his recovery, you could see in his eyes that he was more determined than ever to regain his spot. Dylan is not only a top aerialist, he is also an amazing park skier and all-around shredder, and has one of the best attitudes towards life. Dylan takes his amazing aerials air awareness and puts it to good use in the terrain parks with such doubles flips as lay-full or full-full, as pictured below. You may have seen Dylan in last year's 4bi9 film Gunnie Season, and be sure to look out for him once again in the up coming 2011 movie from 4bi9 Media.

Windells

I recently caught up with Mr. Ferguson for a brief minute in between his hectic training schedule to ask him a couple of questions about his upcoming webseries "The Dielon Scene", along with getting his thoughts on freeskiing making it into the Olympics and his crossover from aerials to park skiing. There should be a lot to expect in this new web series, including skiing, water ramping, surfing, skateboarding and of course some good ol' fashioned lifestyle footage. Enjoy.

Tell us about your new web series "The Dielon Scene" and what we should expect.

Basically "The Dielon Scene" is a little video series that I will be putting together up over the next few months about my winter season. It will be starring me and some of my friends, and all of the people I am lucky enough to travel with all winter long. Ryan Wyble from 4bi9 helped me out a ton with most of the editing work, so big shout out to him!

Park City

How was your season?

My season was a fun one as all winter seasons should be. I was able to travel around the world competing on the World Cup aerials tour. I traveled to Quebec, Calgary, Lake Placid, Deer Valley, Moscow, Russia and Minsk, Belarus. I didn't compete my best in some of the contests but was able to get some good results. I also went to Stratton, Vermont at the end of March for the USSA National Championships. I was able to come out with the win in Nationals, which was a great way to end the aerials season. After the aerials season ended I began filming a segment with 4bi9 Media for their new movie. I was able to make a trip out to Mammoth at the beginning of May which turned out to be pretty sweet.

Utah Olympic Sports Park

What are your plans for the summer?

Most of my summer will be spent in wonderful Park City Utah, where I live. I will be doing a lot of training at the Utah Olympic Park on their water ramps and will also be spending a lot of time at the Center of Excellence working on my trampoline skills and improving my body strength. I also plan on making a trip to Mount Hood at some point to do some shredding at Windells. I also hope to make it to the ocean as much as possible to improve my surf game. Other than that though I'm hoping to spend lots of time with my friends here in Park City and enjoy the summer time sun.

What it's like to go from skiing aerials all year to skiing park for 4bi9's movie, and how has your upbringing in aerials helped you with that aspect of skiing?

The switch from aerials to park is the complete opposite but I have been doing both for so long that I have no problem switching back and forth. Aerials helps give me better air awareness and I believe it has only helped my park skiing more and more.

Park City

There are a lot of people who tend to think that aerialists don't actually ski that well. True or false?

Well that would true in most cases. Most aerialists come from a trampoline or gymnastics background but not all. There are a few aerialists that can shred the mountain harder than most, including Scotty Bahrke, Matt Depeters and Hans Gardner from the US Team. But the guys from the Japanese and Chinese ski teams don't come from a huge skiing background so they tend to fall trying to stop at the bottom. But I definitely don't want people to think that we're all bad skiers, because I will shred the mountain harder that most people any day.

What are you thoughts on halfpipe skiing getting into the Olympics, along with the possibility of slopestyle skiing getting in as well?

I think it's so rad that halfpipe is in the Olympics now. It just proves that the sport has been raised to the highest level of competition possible. And I really hope slopestyle gets in as well. The level of skiing in both halfpipe and slopestyle has been raised dramatically in the last few years, and both of those events have proved in my mind that their athletes should be able to compete in the Olympics.

With the inclusion of freeskiing events, do you think aerials will take a hit popularity or funding-wise as far as the Olympics go?

Well seeing as no one pays attention to aerials until an Olympic year, I believe the Olympics are what help out our sport with funding and getting more kids involved. There isn't much money in the sport of aerials, so it is all about marketing yourself as an individual and showing that you are different from the rest. But with halfpipe and and possibly slopestyle getting into in the Olympics I do believe we will be seeing less and less kids joining the aerials programs around the country.

Last question...will we see you in the 2014 Olympics?

Duh. I missed the 2010 Olympics so I am sure as hell not missing 2014.

The Dielon Scene EP. 1 from dylan Ferguson on Vimeo.