Erstellt am: 18. 1. 2014 - 12:03 Uhr

Last Chance Saloon For A Snowboarding Icon

For this Saturday's Reality Check Special I sit down with Sigi Grabner who wants to end his glittering 20 year snowboard racing career at the Sochi Olympics.

I met Sigi Grabner in the Hotel Wetzlgut, a Bad Gastein hotel overlooking the World Cup parallel slalom course where the veteran would do battle the next morning in an attempt to secure qualification for a 5th and final Olympic games. Now 38 years old, he looked remarkably fresh faced and was still sporting the long ponytail that has become his trademark. Under pressure for his place in a strong Austrian team, the Carinthian was optimistic of pulling off the results he needs:

"I feel good this year," he said "I’d really like to finish my career in Russia."

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Yet Grabner now finds himself racing against hungry young competitors who are a whole generation younger. "I was rooming this season with a guy who was only 20 and we were joking that he could be my son," says Grabner.

I first met Grabner 8 years ago in Bardoneccia, the small Piedmont town that hosted the snowboard events of the 2006 Turin Olympics. Charming, open and with perfect mastery of English, he was grinning like a Cheshire cat that day having just won a bronze medal in the parallel slalom. It was Austria's first ever Olympic medal in snowboarding. This had followed a World Championship gold on home snow at Kreischberg, a moment he treasure as one of the most precious in his two-decade long career: "It was such a relief, for me, for the team, for the federation. I knew I had to do it and I just did it."

The glory years continued with Grabner collecting a second overall World Cup title in 2009, but there followed a dark series of setbacks. Later that year he suffered an ankle injury that threatened to end his career and, having recovered from a risky operation to fix the problem he tore cruciate ligament. Having already achieved so much in the sport, it must have been tempting to call it a day but Grabner was determined to end his career on his own terms: "I never wanted to be forced to stop because of an injury. I wanted to stop when I felt it was right."

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Olympics are always special occasions, of course, and Grabner went dreamy eyed as he recalled walking out with the team at the Opening Ceremony of the Nagano Olympics in 1998, but he admits that some of the aspects of the upcoming Sochi Olympics are disturbing. A bike trip to Sochi made him aware of the ecological impact of the games: "It was one big construction site" and the imprisonment of Pussy Riot has troubled him.

Athletes don't choose who gets to host the Games, of course, and are expressly forbidden to bring politics into the Olympics, so Grabner had to choose his words carefully, but he admits that "everyone has their thoughts" on the political situation, the environmental destruction and the repression of criticism:

"It is a very difficult situation in Russia. I would really like to openly speak about it, but it would be problematic."

The future of his sport might also appear problematic. You hardly see hard-booted Alpine snowboards on the slopes of most Austrian resorts nowadays and, indeed, only a few specialist shops sell and advise riders on the equipment. If people take up snowboarding, it tends to be on freestyle boards. "But if they tried carving on an Alpine board, they'd love it!" insists Grabner, who designs his own boards. "Our sport has always been a niche sport and the numbers have stayed pretty constant."

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He says freestyle snowboarding is much bigger but has suffered a much steeper decline since challenged by the trend for freeride and new school skiing. He's sure racing will continue: "Because young people still want to see who is the fastest down the mountain. Thousands turn up at youth competitions in the US. Even if they are using freestyle boards they still want to see who is the quickest in their age group. And the next step for them is an Alpine board."

The sport of Alpine Snowboarding is held under the banner of the ski federation, which Grabner sees as a mixed blessing. There is funding and support but little autonomy: "To be honest, we are promoted as skiers on one board. With a bit more freedom we could promote ourselves in a much more snowboard-orientated way." On the other hand, he feels that the freestyle snowboard world has become too business-orientated and athletes there are under too much pressure to use their skills to sell clothes and accessories.

A 13th place in Bad Gastein was not enough to secure that coveted Olympic spot. So today it all goes down to the wire at Rogla in Slovenia, the last event before the Olympics. Grabner has been training hard all week in Lienz in East Tyrol and now, for this vital race, returns to a milestone in his career. It was in Rogla that he won the Junior World Championships 20 years ago.

"I like the slope. I really want to qualify for Sochi."