Issue 47 Aurora Magazine April 2022

focus
Henry gets plenty of air practising in the backyard on his trampoline.
Henry came an outstanding seventh in his first ever event and a gobsmacking third in
another. After collating points from all his events Henry was in sixth position on the
Oceania Freeride ranking which covers Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. He’s
also ranked amongst the top 40 in the world for junior Freeride.
At the time of writing this, Henry is rugged up in Europe waiting to compete in three
events over three weekends being held in Austria, Switzerland and Norway. The aim is
to gain enough points to qualify for the Freeride Junior World Championships to be held
in Austria in January next year.
Of course, the obvious question is how does Henry train for these competitions when
he lives in a place with no snow.
“I stay fit and we have an old trampoline in the backyard and I practise manoeuvres on
that. But I’ve also spent the last 18 months mentally preparing; visualising jumps, turns
and drops and how to control a tight carve through deep snow. I’ve watched a lot of
YouTube clips too.”
Visualisation has been a vital tool because, before Henry headed to France to compete,
he’d only had six days on the snow in Hotham since leaving Japan 18 months before. It
was not for lack of wanting; that virus that he’d seen on Japanese news in 2020 had well
and truly clipped his snow-tipped travel-wings.
There’s no doubt that Henry is a bit of a freak of nature and his story is certainly one
that will inspire others. You could also consider a film script about a gusty kid from
regional Australia carving up the snow in far flung places and parallels to movies like
Cool Runnings (about a Jamaican bobsled team) and Eddie the Eagle (about a British
Olympic ski jumper that never gave up) are bound to tweak the interest of marketingsavvy
companies. Henry is already a brand ambassador for snowboard maker, Mammut,
and during the course of this interview a call came in from well known clothing
company, The North Face, wanting to start discussions.
Closer to home, Henry’s parents, Chris and Deb, are equally in awe of their teenage son.
“He’s incredibly passionate about snowboarding and has worked hard in a weekend
job to buy his own gear,” says Deb, before adding that this included the scary need for
avalanche gear which every competitive rider must carry.
“He has been the driver of this, not me. He researches everything in great detail, hands
me the plan and says, ‘this is what I want to do and this is how we can do it’. We’re by
no means rich and we’re very frugal but we’re lucky enough to be able to support him
and that’s very cool. Anyone with an adolescent knows that if that child is dedicated to
their dream you’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen.”
Deb adds that her son now has a network of freeriding friends all over the world and
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