On the phone:

What’re you up to these days?

I live in Ottawa, and do home renovations and other construction work.

Are you coaching any groms right now?

Not at the moment, full time or anything, but I might here and there.

You used to be a mogul skier, but never competed in the Winter Olympics, and you also had a successful competition career within freeskiing. Would you have competed in the Olympics had freeskiing been a discipline in your day?

I think selfishly and without thinking about it too much, as an individual athlete I would have. Why not? If you have a chance to do well, from a very selfish perspective, I would have loved to have been in the Olympics and had the chance to go, without thinking about the pros and cons.

Photo: Nate Abbott

You were one of the invited athletes to the upcoming B&E Inventational. Do you think open events like that are more beneficial to the sport and its athletes, or is something as prestigious as the Olympics that only comes around once every four years more beneficial?

I think if you are to measure the health of the sport, it’s not necessarily a good measure to look at the Olympics, at least in our types of sports. I 100-percent think that events like the Inventational and other similar ones, [Red Bull] Linecatcher, and Orage Masters, are important to look at. But for the individual athlete, the Olympics is like, how the hell are you going to do something better for yourself than to get a medal at the Olympics as far as endorsements and money and fame go? It’s not to say, you know, ‘why couldn’t the Olympics take on those formats?’ Different formats, the public isn’t that stupid.

Do you have any early predictions of who is going to come out on top at the Olympics?

I think Henrik [Harlaut] and Gus [Kenworthy], those are quick off the top of my head. In halfpipe, who knows, right? Who’s even going to be healthy by then? I want a Canadian sweep of the men’s halfpipe, and sweep with the chicks in slopestyle.

Watch for Dave to come back and school some n00bs this April in the B&E Inventational.