Erstellt am: 27. 2. 2011 - 10:55 Uhr
Twisting in the Tauern
It's a perfect window of weather in the Alps and I'm standing by a kicker on the sun-drenched Kitzsteinhorn glacier above Kaprun watching the finals of the 9th edition of the Austrian Freeski Open, a slopestyle parcours of 4 rails and ramps. The walls of the jump next to me are as tall as an African elephant's back and I'm watching a skier, all baggy red suit and flailing limbs, spinning through the cloudless blue sky.
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On television and even from a distance, it looks like they float through the air, but up close, the speed at take-off takes your breath away. There seems real violent potential in this velocity as his skis swish up the ramp - the threat of disaster and injury - and then the explosion of twisting. At close quarters, you really appreciate the risks these guys are taking. The skier in red sails high above my head, performing three full rotations while allowing his body to go off-axis, every movement of the legs balanced out with an opposite movement of the upper body, before landing perfectly upright with a knee crunching slap on the glacial snow.
With the safe landing I could breathe again. The first chords of the White Stripes "Fell in Love with a Girl" album started up the PA system. After a winter of running away from ubiquitous Hüttengaudi and Jägermeister, this was a bliss.
Even to an inexpert eye, the standard of competition up on the Kitzsteinhorn was quite phenomenal this year. I was chatting after the event with commentator Nico Zacek, a professional skier himself, who told me the level was rising in on the circuit year after year as young, hungry skiers push the established skiers to try out new tricks go higher and twist faster.
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Swiss star Elias Ambrühl, the winner of the recent Playstreets event in Bad Gastein, pulled off 3 and a half rotations of his body, went off-axis twice and still only managed second place and didn't seem particularly surprised."That's the trick I usually make on the big jumps," he told me. I looked at the ramp, over twice my head height. "This isn't a big jump?" I asked. He smiled and shuffled off.
Marty "McFly" Winkler, organizer of this event and a sort of godfather of the Austrian Freeski community agrees. "The progression of the sport is just amazing. Year after year the level of competition increases. I can tell you already: next year it is going to be even higher."
There's a problem though with freeskiing though, as with many extreme sports: it's hard sometimes to communicate just how spectacular the events are up close. If television sanitizes the danger, explaining the tricks in words sounds like a maths lesson. And, in their obsession with being loose and unexcitable, the skiers themselves often make it difficult for outsiders to access their small world. Their restrictive vocabulary, for example, expressing the experience of travelling the world and sailing inverted among the mountain peaks in just three key adjectives: "sick", "awesome" or "I'm stoked." They are so studiously laid back, you can often get the false impression that they couldn't care whether they win or lose and this aura of cool makes it hard for us to identify with them and empathize with what they are doing, to appreciate on an emotional level the daring and elasticity that these guys show in the shadows of public recognition.
Even victory requires understatement. I'm watched part of the action with a man dressed as a giant banana, Sean Balmer, the video editor of Downdays magazine, who is ubiquitous on the freeski tour, handing out free drinks and good vibes. "The big factor is proving that you're in control. When the guys make it look easy, that's when you know they have really mastered the tricks. They have the muscle memory to go off the jump and know they are going to complete the trick perfectly." So you win by making it look effortless.
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For me the emotional gateway into freeskiing came this year in the comeback of Patrick Hollaus. There is real human drama here; and real emotion too in the story of handsome local Pinzgau skier, competing here again after 8 months out with a horrific knee injury sustained during a botched landing. He ripped everything during that fall, the ligaments and the cartilage, and yet he has fought his way back, step by step of painful and tedious rehab. "Of course the injury plays on my mind," he confided, "it happened during a trick I knew well. It just shows it can happen any time." I know a thing or two about knee injuries, and that's why I watched his jumps with my heart in my stomach.
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And yet Patrick showed no reserve on the approach to the big kickers. "It's like he's never been away," said commentator Nico Zacek, admiringly. Eventually a delighted Hollaus takes the title of best Austrian: "It was unbelievable for me," he said. "That was my target. I'm just speechless."
The eventual winner of the event was Atomic rider Andreas Hatveit of Norway, a previous Winter X-games winner from 2008, and at the tender age of 24 already considered almost a veteran. He told me he was surprised to have won and admitted that it's not just one big party on the tour. He says he came to Kaprun because he "wanted to have fun and ski a lot", but he admits that life on tour also involves "a lot of pressure to succeed."
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Freeskiing might live from its family atmosphere of conviviality, Hatveit is a close friend of Ambrühl who he pipped into second, but it is also about sponsorship. Skiers might be "loose" but if you can't bring in the results, there are plenty of young talented skiers waiting to take your contract. If you want to keep travelling and doing the sport you love, you do need the results. The final was a close, the crowd seemed sure that Ambrühl's massive final jump had secured him victory in what has already been an excellent year for the Swiss. "It was really tight between those two," says Zacek. "They're actually pretty good friends. I wasn't sure at first that Andreas had the winning jump, but I think, in the end, the judges were right."
As the young sport establishes itself, the jumps are getting bigger and bigger. "Yeah, the sport is progressing, so they need a little more air time to throw down those double flips we've been seeing today," says Zacek. But where will it all end. "As long as the jumps are well designed and safe, they can get even bigger, that's no problem."
(photos: Tom Bause & Christoph Schoech)
Gewinnspiel
Andreas Hatveit, Gewinner der Austrian Freeski open 2011, fährt Atomic Ski. Du willst auch? Kein Problem, wir verlosen nämlich ein Paar der neuen Atomic Punx Park-Ski inklusive Bindung (FFG 16 Team) in der für euch passenden Schilänge.
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