So Matsuda arrived in Vail last fall with a goal in mind: to win a gold medal at the 2022 Olympics.

To get there, he’ll have to make the Olympic team in Japan, which won’t be easy. The stacked Japanese team qualified four athletes — the maximum amount — into the 2018 Olympics, with all of those athletes finishing in the top 20 and one on the podium.

Aware of the difficult task ahead of him, Matsuda looked to the sport of moguls skiing for the underdog, the competitor who had the most unlikely path to the Olympics in 2018. He found Casey Andringa. …