LIVIGNO, Italy — The next time you see a senior citizen barreling down the mountain, maybe doing a double cork while he’s at it, don’t think twice.
That might just be your neighborhood’s friendly new Olympic champion.
Alex Ferreira, the freestyle skier known to don prosthetics to look 80 years old and turn into a character named “Hotdog Hans” when he’s not kicking butt in the halfpipe, added a gold medal Friday night to the silver and bronze hardware he won at the past two editions of the Winter Games to “finish the rainbow,” as his mother said.
The 31-year-old American, a longtime fixture on the slopes and in the schools and recreation centers in Aspen, Colorado, also put the U.S. in the win column for the first time in two weeks of halfpipe, slopestyle and big air action at Livigno Snow Park during the Milano Cortina Olympics.
“I’m going to drink copious amounts of beer,” Ferreira said when asked how he would celebrate.