PARK CITY -- Her parents moved their mattress. That's where it all started.

Nikki Stone was 3 when a baby sitter helped execute her first flip. She had jumped on the bed plenty, Stone recalls now, and her parents finally gave in -- the Stones moved the old mattress to the basement of the family's Princeton, N.J., home and bought themselves a new one.That's where it all started.

That's where Nikki Stone -- who calls Park City home -- began her ascent to the top of the women's freestyle skiing world.

The mattress in the basement made for forgiving practice landings for the flips, cartwheels and gymnastic antics that turned out to be the foundation of a stellar career as a champion aerialist.

Landings since have not been so forgiving. She is an Olympic champion, but she has nearly destroyed her back.

After two Olympics, a World Championship and a decade worth of World Cup titles, Stone announced her retirement earlier this month at the freestyle World Championships in Switzerland, a day before competing in her aerial event.

"I've learned to cope with a lot of pain," she said when she made the announcement. "But I want to be sure I can sit down and bend and walk and play someday with my children and grandchildren."

And so the Olympic champion from Westborough, Mass., came home this weekend for the final event of her career: the Chevy Truck U.S. Alpine and Freestyle Championships taking place through Monday at the Utah Winter Sports Park, Deer Valley and Snowbasin.

With poise and approachability characteristic of the athlete, Stone, 28, talked recently with the Deseret News about her career, her future and the injuries that are the main reason she will graduate from the sport she loves.

The pain, she says, has been excruciating at times. Acupuncture, weight training and trampoline work brought her back. "But it's still a pretty major issue in my life."

Contrary to what people might think, Stone explains, it is not spectacular falls that have caused the injury -- rather, it is the pressure of her 135-pound frame tumbling 45 feet out of the air and connecting with snowy hills for half her life.

In landing after landing, she has compressed the discs of her spine and torn the tiny muscles that stabilize her back so badly doctors told her two years ago she would never ski again, much less jump.

Back in Park City for last week's start of the competition, Stone says she has accomplished everything she wanted to in her freestyle career.

Talking to reporters, Stone says she will never forget looking down at the scoreboard from the top of the run at the Iizuna Kogen resort during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. China's Nannan Xu had just completed a full-double-full, "and it was beautiful," Stone says.

She stared at the electronic scoreboard for what seemed like an hour before Xu's score among the field of competitors flashed "2." Stone had won.

"I wish I could take that feeling and bottle it," she said. "I'm sure I would be a very rich woman."

Stone had given it her Olympic all. There had been no dumbing down of her final jump -- the difficult lay-triple-full -- which required the inverted "lay" maneuver where the body is stretched out similar to a swan dive.

Through the years, through the injuries, everyone has wanted to know the magic of Stone's success, said Bill Marolt, president of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, the national governing body for the sports.

"At the end of the day, that magic is Nikki Stone. It's her ability to focus. It's her ability to set goals and do whatever is needed to achieve those goals."

So she earned Olympic gold in Nagano. She won the aerial gold medal at World Championships in 1995 and 1998. She has 10 World Cup victories under her belt, including January's Sprint Grand National World Cup at Heavenly resort in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Earlier this month, she won a bronze at the World Freestyle Championships in Meiringen, Switzerland.

But this day her luggage is lost somewhere in the airline hinterlands between Switzerland and Park City. She doesn't have her daytimer, or her clothes or some ski equipment vital to sport competition she will conclude this week.

No matter. She is busy.

She will compete in the final aerial event of her life Monday, but this day she is making phone calls. Lots of them: to the florist, the photographer, the caterer who will deliver food to 200 guests at her summer wedding to take place at The Canyons resort in Park City.

She can hardly contain her happiness. Stone will marry first-year Pepperdine University law student Michael Spencer, a former freestyle moguls skier.

She is complimented on an unusual silver necklace that hangs from her 5-foot-8 frame. She smiles, touches it tenderly, then separates the metal pendant to show it is really two individual, modern-styled figures joined.

"My fiance gave it to me," she says. A present from Quincy Market in Boston. She beams.

This is her future: more time with her soon-to-be husband and her parents, and maybe a second career as a television commentator.

She jokes that she's "ready" to the television folks gathered at a press event last week before the national championship.

"I also want to go out to gyms and diving complexes around the country and continue to promote women's sports," she says in an interview. Generally, sponsorships are equal between men and women, she says, "but air time is not."

A network recently showed 30 minutes of men's aerials, 30 minutes of men's moguls and "about 30 seconds" of women's events.

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The USSA's Deborah Engen says many of the younger girls on the aerial team are still developing. Consequently, there is quite a performance gap between Stone and most other young women on the team. "No one is going to be stepping into Nikki's shoes and contending for World Cup wins."

But Stone isn't thinking about the hole she'll leave on the team.

She is trying not to feel pressured as she headed into Monday's competition at the Utah Winter Sports Park in Park City. "I'll try my best. It's my last contest. I don't want it to be a stressful thing.

"I want to go out there, jump with my friends and have fun."

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