After President Donald Trump called Olympic freestyle skier Hunter Hess a "real loser" during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Hess suddenly found himself at the center of a viral controversy that transformed what was supposed to be the biggest moment of his career into something far more surreal. Now, he's reclaiming the phrase through The Real Loser Project, a line of hats and T-shirts benefiting Stoked, an organization that aims to help underserved youth in action sports get access and mentorship. In this as-told-to essay, Hess reflects on the backlash, the emotional weight of competing under intense scrutiny, and finding his way back to the sport he loves.
One of the first times I realized skiing would become a huge part of my life was when I was 12, building a jump at Mount Bachelor with one of my best friends and my dad. That night, we went to dinner with our families, and my friend and I kept calling each other "ski partners" because we felt like we had bonded in this really unique way. Looking back now, I think that was the day I thought skiing was different than anything else. It felt so pure and so real.
Qualifying for the Olympics was one of the hardest things I've ever done physically and mentally. People don't really understand how brutal the process is in freestyle skiing. You spend years sacrificing everything for just a handful of qualifying events and tiny moments that can completely determine your future. There were points where skiing stopped feeling like skiing and started feeling like pressure, which was really hard because the sport had always been my escape. It had always been the thing I returned to when life got overwhelming, not the thing causing the stress.
But I kept going because I wanted to prove to myself that all the sacrifices meant something. And when I finally qualified for Team USA, it was one of the greatest moments of my life. My parents were there. My family was there. These were the people who had carried me through every hard moment leading up to that point.
That's why representing Team USA felt so personal to me, and, honestly, I think that context got really lost once the press-conference clip started circulating online.
We had just gotten to Milan the day before, and none of us really had time to process anything. We got off the plane and immediately went into this Team USA outfit fitting that took hours, then had to take another long bus ride to the athletes’ village. Everyone was exhausted. We woke up early the next morning for the press conference. The whole thing felt pretty casual and low-stakes at the time. We were probably more focused on trading Olympic pins and soaking everything in than anything happening in that press room.
There were maybe three reporters there and a couple of camera guys way in the back. Nobody on our team thought this was going to become some huge, defining moment.
At the time, there were protests happening around Milan, and one of the reporters asked what it felt like representing the United States during a moment when the country felt really divided. I answered honestly. I said that just because I was wearing the American flag didn't mean I supported everything going on in the United States.
I wasn't trying to make some statement or polarize anybody. I was mostly just trying to answer the question sincerely and move on. For me, representing Team USA had always felt really personal. It meant representing my family, my hometown, my coaches, my teammates—all the people who had carried me through every high and low leading up to the Olympics. Those were the people I thought about when I thought about the United States. And at the same time, there were obviously difficult things happening back home, and people felt really divided.
After the press conference, none of us really thought much about it. We went to lunch, walked around Milan, and did the opening ceremony later that night. Then my sister texted me saying some big accounts were posting clips from the interview, and I remember thinking, Wait, I didn't even know they had access to that footage. At first, it mostly just felt strange. Then it started snowballing really fast.
By the time we got to Switzerland for our final Olympic training camp, everything had kind of exploded. I was waking up in the middle of the night, completely jet-lagged, checking my phone, trying to understand what was happening online. Then, one day after training, my agent called me and said, "Well, at least the president knows your name."
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. My teammate Birk Irving was sitting next to me, so he looked it up on his phone. At first, he thought it had to be fake. Then he realized it wasn't, and he just started laughing in complete disbelief.
That's how I found out Trump called me a "real loser" on social media.
It felt like the world kind of came down around me. People online were acting like I hated America or hated representing Team USA, and that genuinely couldn't have been further from how I felt. I spent years preparing for the Olympics, and suddenly every thought in my head is consumed by something completely different.
It became all-consuming. I'd wake up and immediately have to deal with another crisis, another phone call, another wave of reactions. I was talking to Olympic security officials, press officers, agents, and law enforcement while also trying to physically and mentally prepare for the biggest competition of my life. I called my parents hysterically crying because I didn’t want skiing to bring this into my life. I just wanted to ski.
The strangest part was how disconnected my actual reality felt from what was happening online. I was surrounded by mountains in this tiny Swiss ski town, training for the Olympics, and if I put my phone down for a second, everything around me still looked peaceful and normal. But every time I picked it back up, it felt like my entire world had exploded again. I'd be standing at the top of the half-pipe, trying to focus on skiing while my brain replayed comments people had written about me or my family online instead. I think that was the hardest part: The thing I loved most suddenly felt attached to all this negativity that I never wanted in the first place.
Physically, I was also falling apart by the time the competition came around. I had a broken wrist, a massive hematoma in my hip, tendinitis, bone bruising, and all these different things piling up at once. I felt like I was hanging on by a thread when I dropped into the pipe. Afterward, I remember my sister basically carrying me down the hill because my body was so wrecked.
For a while after the Games, I kept thinking I needed another Olympics because I wanted a different ending. But eventually I realized the experience was always going to be bigger than my results.
I had a hard time reconnecting with skiing after that. The sport stopped feeling like the thing that grounded me and started feeling like it was attached to all this outside pressure. I went away for a bit after the Games just to clear my head, and when I came back to Utah, I forced myself to go back up on the mountain, even though my body still felt destroyed and I was mentally exhausted.
At first, honestly, it sucked. I didn’t feel good on my skis. My confidence felt weird. Everything felt emotionally tangled together. But eventually, I started remembering why I loved skiing in the first place: It was about being outside with your friends, trying to learn something new. It was about getting through fear together. It was about community. I needed to get back to that version of skiing.
After Trump called me a "real loser," I started thinking about making it my own instead of letting it hang over me forever. During one of my Olympic runs, I put an "L" on my forehead, almost in celebration, like, "Okay, if this is who you think I am, then I'll own it myself." But after the Olympics, I realized I wanted the idea to become something bigger than me. I wanted to create something positive out of an experience that had felt overwhelmingly negative.
That's what became the Real Loser Project. On the flight home from Italy, I kept thinking about how strange the whole experience had been. There were people online acting like I had done something really brave or significant, but I didn’t feel that way. I felt overwhelmed. I felt emotionally wrecked. At the same time, I also felt this responsibility to turn the experience into something meaningful. I didn’t want the story to just end with outrage and negativity; I needed to make something constructive out of it.
That’s why donating all of the proceeds to Stoked felt so important to me. Action sports gave me everything. They gave me my community, my confidence, and my sense of self. Every time I’ve gone through something really difficult in my life, I retreat to these sports. It’s how I connect with all my best friends. If we’re not skiing, we're surfing or skateboarding. They have always given me purpose and community in a real way.
Not everybody gets access to that. Skiing, especially, can feel really inaccessible, and I was lucky my parents were able to support me growing up. A lot of kids never get that opportunity. So when I learned about what Stoked was doing—introducing underserved kids to action sports and giving them community through those experiences—it immediately resonated with me.
Looking back now, I honestly think releasing this project helped me finally close the chapter on the Olympics emotionally. The experience was just so different than anything I ever imagined it could be. It was painful and overwhelming, and surreal in ways I still don’t fully know how to explain. But I think it also clarified what actually matters to me moving forward.
At the end of the day, I’m just a guy who really loves skiing. Any time all the external stuff or outside noise gets too much, I know I can return to skiing and just ride because I love it. It's always been my outlet and, in a way, my safe haven. It's like my center ground. It's gotten me through the hardest moments of my life, and I'm sure it'll do that again.
