Erstellt am: 15. 2. 2015 - 10:49 Uhr
"It's the show that makes freeskiing special"
As we wait for the action to unfold at the 6th edition of the Playstreets slopestyle event, legendary freeskier Jon Olsson takes me up to the snowpark in Bad Gastein. He's promised to teach me some basic park skills and discuss a sport that he has seen grow from a punk outside to an Olympic discipline. What’s the next step for the sport he loves?
"We need events that showcase the sport of freeskiing to a lot of people in an inventive and playful way” says Olsson. The 32-year old is a multiple winner of the Winter X-Games as well as 5 FIS giant slaloms and one of the few skiers to bridge the schism between the style-orientated world of free skiing and the more traditional Alpine disciplines. But he believes the future of free-skiing lies in maintaining the entertainment element of his sport:
"I’ve been involved in the sport of skiing since the late 1990s. I did Big Air contests throughout the 2000s, I’ve raced FIS races, World Cup races too. After you have seen it all, you realise that what makes freeskiing special is that it really is a show and it is something cool for the people to watch."
Chris Cummins
With that in mind it is hardly a surprise that Olsson is a fan of the Playstreets, the bi-annual urban parcours event held on and above the treacherously steep streets of the town of Bad Gastein. The competition, which sees the world’s elite tumbling and spinning past the balconies of grand hotels, sliding past frozen waterfalls and skidding over the roof of a schnapps bar, attracts crowds of 10,000 and is broadcast across the globe. It’s sport, it’s marketing of course, but it is also show business:
"Personally I think the Playstreets is one of the very most important events that we have," says Olsson, "It is a wonderful way to show what we can do."
Chris Cummins
The course is a formidable sight. I climb up to the start with Austrian rider Tobi Tritscher. On a wooden platform above the towering Hotel Salzburgerhof, Tobi points down the narrow chute that leads steeply down over an alleyway and into a copse of trees.
It looks like the sort water slide I wasted my youth on. But this slide is covered in hard icy snow. It’s hemmed in by solid-looking wooden boards and it brings the riders down to a right-angled kicker.
"Absolutely unique"
How to best describe what it feels like to be on the course? Russ Henshaw, a winner from 2009, describes it as "like one of those manmade mountainbike tracks, but instead of being through the woods it goes straight through the middle of town."
It looks, frankly, terrifying, and yet Tobi keeps coming back. "It’s a crazy location," he says. "It’s absolutely unique and the course is awesome. It’s fun but also super difficult. The crowd always goes crazy - everyone is having a great time."
The Razzmatazz
It took eight weeks for the carpenters and engineers to put the course together, using 110 cubic metres of wood and 19.800 bolts as well as tons of snow. The TV coverage is carefully choreographed and somewhat circus-like with plumes of steam being farted out of the mountain as the rider jump past the Hotel Bellevue. The pictures will be seen in the USA and Japan.
Chris Cummins
This is a big, costly event, but the riders deserve it, says Nico Zacek, a former rider and stalwart of the freeski scene who is calling the jumps for the live commentary. "I don’t think we are such a small niche sport anymore. Being in the Olympics was very important for us. It gave us a big boost. There are sports like bobsleigh that get huge amounts of commercial sponsorship and TV coverage but there are loads of young people out on the mountain ever day doing our sport. We are not that small."
The razzmatazz is important too. "The exposure is huge," says Henshaw. "It’s kind of cool that the event is so different from anything else on the calendar. It shows a different aspect of freeskiing. That’s why I keep coming back."
"It's not all about size"
What’s different? Well because of the confines of the course, it is not all about size. Some of the riders in Bad Gastein are now mostly to be found filming rather than traipsing around the world tour but Zacek says this is the one event they take time out for: "The Playstreets is that one event where the riders want to go because they don’t have to make that 40 metre jump that provides the spectacle in most events. They can go quite small and be creative and technical."
Dean Treml/Red Bull Content Pool
Tritscher, from nearby Schladming, is more at home in big mountain freeriding nowadays, but he has competed at every single Playstreets since the event's conception in 2007. He admits he feels under a bit of extra pressure being a home favourite in an event that is closest the Austrian freeski scene has to Alpine skiing’s Hahnenkamm weekend:
"I don’t want to let anyone down and I want to put on a good show." But he says he blocks all that out when he is on the course:
A Sea Of People
We move down to a viewing platform opposite the Hotel
Bellevue. Here the riders have to slow down to go under the tunnel of scaffolding before launching into a jump in the night - the narrow channel disappears into an abyss with the crowds, a sea of people, hemmed in close. "The terrifying thing is you come on the the take-off and you can’t see anything. It just goes down, down, down. That’s always a surprise. A big surprise."
For the crowd below the riders flash by - caught by the floodlights as the spin and twist above the rooftops. "It is one of the best opportunities to be so close to the crowd," says Nico Zacek, a former rider a stalwart of the freeski scene. "I think it is one of the most impressive images I have ever seen, the skier above the backdrop of those crowds."
Chris Cummins
The Playstreets is a marketing extravaganza. Advertising hoardings plaster the jumps. Freeskiing, which in its origins could be seen as an counterculture, certainly knows how to sell stuff. Have these athletes been reduced to spinning billboards?
"I don’t see it that way," says Zacek , who resolutely refuses to hark back to the old vagabond days: "It’s our sport. I’m happy if it gets more commercial because I want it to grow. All the kids out there should see what it is about. If they want to try out the sport then that’s cool. If they don’t then that’s fine too. But I would still love my sport if it was done by 5 million Austrians."
A Norwegian Triumph
In the end the night belongs to 19 year old Norwegian Oystein Braaten, who puts down the biggest jumps with the least mistakes. I fight my way through a rather thirsty crowd to find him as he clutches his trophy in the finishing area.
Chris Cummins
"It was amazing. I came here expecting the have fun weekend and hopefully to land a good run. I wasn’t thinking of winning so to take the title was so sick. The course was tough and it was one of the biggest crowds I’ve ever skied in front of. It was awesome."