Ski & Snow Magazine

2020-2021 has been unique in terms of covid, how has the pandemic
affected you personally and professionally?
2021 and 2020 have definitely been unique in terms of Covid, you know.
With there being a global pandemic going on it was a tough decision in
the first place to even leave home morally. Travelling around where you
make the problem a lot worse and by doing that it doesn’t really help it, so
personally that was really tough to make that decision to come overseas
and to compete. But in terms of professionally, I’ve actually had one of the
best years of my life. It’s been amazing, I’ve learnt so much about myself
and my skiing and experienced so many cool things, and in a way it’s been
really nice staying in places longer than we normally would due to Covid
travel restrictions.
X Games in Aspen you won Gold running the right 16 then the left
how much time and effort had gone into that, can you explain how
you get to that level – I have watched it several times and still can’t
get my head around it?
X-Games was crazy, winning gold was something I’ll never forget, and was
definitely one of the proudest moments of my life. The right 16 took a lot
of work, you know, the time and energy that not only myself put into it but
Tommy, my coach and Cardrona building facilities ,and travelling the world
chasing this one trick, was definitely tough at times. We did lots of bag
training, lots of trampoline training, 4 times a week on the trampoline. We
were lucky to have a bag at Cardrona so we were on that at least 4 times
a week, and so I learnt it for the first time in Sept 2020 and did it again two
weeks before X-Games, I guess it just all worked out. There was definitely
a bit of luck to that but that’s all part of the game. A lot of time and effort went
into it, around a year and a half.
When throwing down the right 16 and then the left how much of that
movement is simply muscle memory and how much is cognitive
adjustment on the snow and in the air?
When I do the right 16, a lot of it is definitely muscle memory, at this stage
at least. I’ve probably only done maybe 20 in my life. So a lot of it is relying
on muscle memory that I’ve built up. But every single half pipe is different
and so I have to make minor adjustments from half pipe to half pipe and
it takes time and sometimes you get it wrong, but the times that you get it
right it pays off.
Image courtesy of ESPN
“X-Games was crazy,
winning gold was
something I’ll never forget,
and was definitely one of
the proudest moments of
my life.”
How did it feel with no crowds there?
No crowds is such a blessing in disguise cause I’m not someone who
feeds off the crowds. I kind of like to get into my own zone, so no crowds
made it feel like another training day which made it easier for sure not
having 10,000 people screaming their heads off. Na but it was really cool.
I think it was Tommy who said that he felt it was an advantage in that
the lack of crowds as it lowered the nerves – is that true?
100% I definitely felt like it was a positive, and advantage with no crowds
because it definitely lowered the nerves. Like I said it felt like another
training day.
In terms of fear – a lot of that above the lip stuff if it goes wrong could
end badly does that factor in, do you train that out or simply deal
with it?
Fear is a massive thing for me as a pipe skier, obviously it’s present and
stuff can go really really wrong. But I just kinda trust myself and trust
my ability and trust all the hard work I’ve put into preparing for that one
moment. Obviously we’re human and we make mistakes but I just try to
factor that out and just calculate ever risk as much as I can so we can lower
the potential of injury.
8// S K I A N DSNOW.CO.NZ
In action at the X Games - Image by Tommy Pyatt