In the early hours of Valentine’s Day, several dozen people gathered at the Tetonia Club in the bar’s namesake Idaho town, decked out in light-up scarves and decorative pins. All sustained by coffee and J-shaped donuts.
This isn’t a typical scene in the town of nearly 400 residents, where most establishments close around 10 p.m. But, it’s also not every night that local Olympian Jaelin Kauf soars down a zipper line of moguls in the gold-medal round of the Milano-Cortina Games.
At the bar Kauf’s dad started, and her brother now runs, fans and friends showed out for the hometown hero, most as early as 2:30 a.m., with Kauf’s first run in the dual moguls slated for half an hour later. This was the week’s second live watch party. A slightly less early gathering took place three days earlier to watch Kauf ski to the silver in the single moguls, eight hours ahead in Livigno, Italy.
“She has a saying ‘Deliver the Love,’ and we’re all here ‘delivering the love’ right back to her,” said Watts Barden, who, like many of the other early risers, knows the Kauf family from working up the road at Grand Targhee ski resort.
Over the last two months, supporters dotted Teton Valley landmarks and businesses with at least a hundred cardboard cut-outs in the shape of the letter “J,” each painted red, white and blue. That includes the Grand Targhee snow stick and the front yard of the Driggs, Idaho, town hall.
Kauf came into both the Olympic single and dual moguls a medal favorite, a position the 29-year-old Alta native knows well.
The reigning duals world champion from last February, Kauf also entered the previous two Olympics as a top-ranked FIS World Cup skier. Last year, she won the circuit’s triple crown equivalent: season titles in single, dual and overall moguls.
The Valentine’s Day final — the dual moguls — made its Olympic debut this year, a regular event on the World Cup circuit in which skiers go head-to-head. Winners advance rounds based on speed and form on bumps and jumps.
A tumble during the semi-finals against France’s Perrine Laffont almost took Kauf out of the running for the top spot in her last event of the Italy Games.
Back home, watching from a livestream projected on the bar’s back wall, a cascade of “oh no’s” conceded that Kauf might not make the big final, which could put her out of guaranteed medal contention.
But then, the judges ruled in Kauf’s favor: her French rival had skied out-of-bounds mid-way down the course, which in moguls is an automatic disqualification.
After facing one of the most stacked line-ups of the day, Kauf made it to the big final, where she ultimately skied to the silver medal, finishing behind Australia’s most successful winter Olympian, Jakara Anthony.
“It was really amazing to get on the podium for the first-ever dual moguls in the Olympics and share that with my teammate,” Kauf told KHOL, referring to Team USA’s Elizabeth Lemley’s bronze medal finish that day. “It was an awesome week.”
The always-humble Kauf isn’t ready to throw her name around the likes of mogul skiing greats Hannah Kearney or Shannon Bahrke, but her results still speak for themselves.
With three silver medals, including her first from 2022, Kauf is now the most decorated American at the Olympics in the sport of mogul skiing. That record was far from her radar.
“That seems pretty crazy to me,” Kauf told KHOL from Italy. “I didn’t hear that or even think about that until after, when I saw the post on Instagram [from U.S. Ski and Snowboard].”
‘Only a handful of moguls’
Kauf was raised on the slopes of Grand Targhee in a house of champion mogul skiers. Her parents, Scott Kauf and Patti Kauf-Melehes, pioneered the sport and each raked in their own cache of World Pro Tour and X Games medals to show for it.
Her home mountain, however, isn’t known for mogul skiing. Instead, it’s better known for wide-open powder fields and record-breaking snowfall, not exactly conducive to the hard-packed surface that’s better for competition and training.
“There’s only a handful of moguls at Targhee to ever ski,” Kauf said with a laugh, acknowledging the irony.
After her first silver medal, the mountain named a run ‘Silver Jae’ in her honor. But Kauf’s backyard slopes would teach her so much more than mogul skiing.
Her parents helped run the local ski club, introducing Kauf to skier cross, big mountain and alpine racing, even competing against Milano-Cortina’s Downhill gold medalist and Victor, Idaho, native Breezy Johnson in the latter.
When her older brother Skyler followed after her parents and specialized in moguls, Kauf also caught the bug. Mogul training at home would just come with an unusual but creative twist.
“My dad would… basically flag the moguls with pine bough and we would ski them up to make moguls,” Kauf said.
On a typical year, Targhee has more deep powder or freshly groomed runs than bumps, especially when it nears its famous 500-inch average snowfall.
“Growing up was just skiing the mountain, hitting cliffs or doing jumps off the catwalk, skiing powder and just learning how to be a good skier in all aspects of the area,” Kauf said.
All those skills have proven vital to Kauf’s finesse at the sport’s highest level: today she’s consistently the fastest skier on the World Cup circuit and the most dominant in the dual moguls, the event whose head-to-head nature takes after skier cross, in which she was a youth national champion.
“My style and the way I ski and why I’m such a strong skier is because I grew up doing everything,” Kauf said.
Not trying to raise a mogul champion, but a lifelong skier
Kauf’s parents contend they weren’t trying to raise a mogul skier. When the question comes up, they mention how their kids were born in Vail, Colorado, where both parents had been setting up a youth freestyle program. That program would later go on to train the three other American women who joined Kauf in Italy.
Instead, the family moved to the more remote setting of Alta to retire from competition and ski powder.
“If we moved from Vail to Grand Targhee, the goal wasn’t to have an Olympic medalist mogul skier, because there were no moguls,” Patti said in a call from Italy.
The goal, she said, was instead to raise kids with the love of a lifelong sport that had brought both parents so much community.
“I felt so grateful for being able to make a career out of skiing, and it was something that I wanted my kids to have that same love because it’s something that you can do most of your entire life,” Scott said.
Still, Kauf took to the sport her parents were so involved in building and never turned back. That Kauf would continue her parents’ legacy brings both to tears.
“Every time I even think about that, I just start crying because I can’t even imagine being a three-time Olympic medalist,” Patti said.
Both parents cheered on Kauf from the Livingno finish arena, a welcome return after COVID-19 restrictions forced them to watch from home during the last Olympics in Beijing.
“It was really neat to be there, to be able to see her and support her,” Scott said upon his return to Teton Valley following the Olympics. “Kind of nerve-racking, but all in a great way.”
Kauf has three more World Cup competitions left to the season, in Japan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
As she fills the role of team veteran and most-decorated World Cup athlete on the current American roster, she’s looking to expand what giving back to the community that raised her means.
That involves broadening her own legacy. Late last year, Kauf launched a foundation called Deliver the Love, a name that takes from the motto she leans into at the start of every course. Her mom serves as the executive director.
“I’m so in awe, yes of what she’s accomplished on the hill, but Jaelin’s legacy is what she has done for the sport of freestyle,” Patti said.
In December, Kauf told KHOL she’ll pick back up her Teton Valley-based foundation in the off-season, and that its focus will likely be scholarships, mentorship opportunities and camps for young girls in sport.
“It’s not been about being the best in the world, chasing Olympics or medals or results or accomplishments of any kind, but just helping to inspire others to find that same passion and same love for whatever sport it is that they love,” Kauf said.
Back at the Tetonia Club, many family friends would argue that legacy has already started. That includes Dana Mackenzie, who, with his wife Deb, has been at Kauf’s competitions since her first Deer Valley World Cup competitions in Utah a decade ago.
“I have parents [just] yesterday telling me about their five-year-old girls totally following her every move, mimicking everything Jaelin does, going skiing five days a week and practicing to be like Jaelin,” Mackenzie said.
