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'You feel like you're there': The simulator guiding Team USA to gold

See how Team USA is training on the PyeongChang ski course...from thousands of miles away.
Team USA skiers practice on a high-tech simulator inside the team's facilities in Park City, Utah. 

The downhill ski course in PyeongChang has just been built, but Team USA is using some state of the art technology to learn the turns and jumps before the Winter Games begin.

Thousands of miles from South Korea, U.S. skiers like Luke Winters are carving up that Olympic course using a giant ski simulator at the team's training facility in Park City, Utah.

"As close as you can be, you feel like you are there," Winters described. "It's not just a little screen you're looking at, the whole thing surrounds you."

It's designed to help athletes who have been injured get back on skis faster, Troy Taylor with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association explained.

An example of what Team USA athletes see while using a high-tech ski simulator at the team's Park City, Utah, facility. 

"For our injured athletes the ski simulator is really a tool for us to test it out. How does it feel? Can we move laterally side-to-side? Can we make those turns?"

It can also help athletes learn all the turns and jumps on any course in the world, including the new Olympic downhill course in South Korea.

"The Olympic downhill course in PyeongChang was a forest two and a half years ago so not only have we never skied on it but no one in the world had," Taylor said.

But they can try it out on the simulator right now in all different types of snow.

The high-tech ski simulator that Team USA athletes train on gives them an opportunity to try out any course in the world, with whatever snow conditions they want. 

"In ski racing you can start first and it’s a smooth course or you can start 30th or 60th and there’s more chatter and more bumps," Luke Winters described.

It's all in a simulator that comes with all the fun of a video game and is giving Team USA virtually every chance to win at the Winter Olympics.

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