There are many things that have motivated Chris Lillis throughout his freestyle skiing career.
The Rochester native followed his older brother Jon’s path into aerials and later gave him an Olympic vision. He missed what would’ve been a special Olympics experience shared with his sibling in 2018 due to an ACL injury suffered just a month before the Pyeongchang Games.
However, none of those moments likely drove him into Tuesday’s qualifying rounds at the Milan Cortina Olympics as much as what he went through four years ago.
Lillis, 27, put down the highest-scoring jump in Olympic history in 2022 — a quintuple-twisting triple flip. That is five twists and three flips — the gold standard of acrobatic skiing — and it pushed the U.S. to a win in the mixed-team event in Beijing.
