CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, ITALY • No offense to Olympic megastars Sidney Crosby or Snoop Dogg, but the celebrity I’d most like to crack open a frosty Peroni with at the Winter Games is Hotdog Hans.

“We’re gonna have to get you and Hans together,” Aspen native and halfpipe skier Alex Ferreira tells me.

That’s wicked sweet, bruh!

Hotdog Hans is the man.

The man I aspire to be when I grow up. And I’m 68 years old.

But there’s still hope for me.

Hotdog Hans “is this old guy. Maybe 85 or 90. But no one really knows his age,” says Ferreira, who likes Hans despite his questionable life choices. “He’s an ex-hot-dogger who loves booze, skiing and women.”

Unlike Hans, Ferreira is an elite athlete dedicated to his freestyle skiing craft. The 31-year-old Colorado native has a very solid chance to bag an Olympic medal as one of the favorites in the freeski halfpipe competition, which begins Thursday in the far northern Italian mountain town of Livigno.

But enough about Ferreira.

As a hotdog skier at least 50 years past his prime, but still a legend in his own mind, Hans is unafraid to talk about himself in the third person and proclaim: “Hotdog Hans is a naughty boy. If you see him, stay away.”

Rocking retro wraparound shades and a righteous gray beard inspired by a billy goat, Hans is a freaking curmudgeon on skis.

I resemble that remark.

With the street cred of three gold medals collected from the SuperPipe at the X Games, Ferreira has attracted 78,000 followers on Instagram.

Not. Too. Shabby.

But that’s nothing compared to Hotdog Hans. Try 1 million devotees on TikTok. Is that any good?

Hans is a social media sensation. He’s a tastemaker who proves you don’t have to be from Texas to ski in jeans. He’s a troublemaker who somehow manages to stay one step ahead of the Aspen police. And way too much of a rebel to ever sell his hotdogging soul and go corporate.

His motto is: Make skiing cheap again.

Seeing as how a daily lift tick at Aspen will set back a righteous dude between two and three Benjamins, that’s a righteous cause.

“88 mph?” Hans says. “That’s my warm-up speed.”

Whoa, dog.

With a filmmaking buddy named Matt Hobbs, Ferreira created Hotdog Hans as his alter (and much older) ego. Their original idea was for Hans to be the ski version of the trash-talking elderly hooper Uncle Drew, who sprung from the imagination of NBA star Kyrie Irving.

What started as a video prank to entertain themselves has turned into an internet phenomenon.

There are now six Hans videos, which have been known to crack 2 million views.

“I dress up like an old man in prosthetics,” says Ferreira, explaining how he gets into his role of a lifetime, “and mess with people on the ski slopes.”

As these Winter Games have shown us more than once, all the pressure of being a gold medal favorite can be rough on the mental health of an elite athlete.

And maybe that’s why I dig Hans. He never, ever takes life too seriously. If a sport isn’t fun, what’s the point of doing it?

When funky, sassy sports of the X Games were first introduced to the Winter Olympics way back in 1998, many of the participants were more about pushing the human limits of physics and gravity than winning a medal.

Hans stubbornly keeps that rebel spirit alive.

“To balance the pressure of the sport and enjoying myself at the same time is really difficult. It’s certainly a fine line,” Ferreira says. “Every (Olympic) athlete here is feeling a tremendous amount of nerves. And that’s good. That means we all care. At the same time, you’ve got to take a little bit of a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” approach. Stop and look around every once in a while. Enjoy it.”

Well, well, well.

Maybe there’s a method to Hotdog’s madness.

Life’s too short, and the world’s too messed up, to let it get you down.

When Hans finally goes over the mountain to the great beyond, he’s already got the epitaph on his grave marker picked out.

“In loving memory of when I gave a bleep.”

Woof.

Never slow down, Hans.

You go, Dog.