Freestyle Skiingthe interview
www.wisthaler.com - Harald Wis
The latest short film by the South Tyrolean champion in search of the perfect descent is popular on the web. We met him in Milan and ...
Friday 19 November 2021 9 minutes reading time
Put one of the most influential freestylers on the international scene, add seracs covered in soft powder, a handful of ice stalagmites and mix it all with Redbull. The mixture can only be an explosion of energy: the one served in the latest adrenaline-pumping video created by Markus Eder, “The ultimate run”.
It took two years of shooting to accomplish this dream feat and to draw the perfect line. To turn it into film, the Legs of Steel crew, directed by director and snowboarder Christoph Thorensen. The short film stars Markus Eder, the undisputed protagonist of fresh snow, who, as a tribute to the mountains and his land, gives bottom to his immense skills as an all-round skier. From the project, conceived and partially approached as early as 2015, an athlete among the most versatile in the world emerges, able to range, without smudging, between the different styles of freeskiing, passing from street to park to backcountry.
All seasoned with imagination, innovation and lots and lots of fun. Markus' perfect descent runs between four locations. It starts from Zermatt, under the severe gaze of the Matterhorn, then a slalom between immense seracs, towers of fresh snow and endless jumps on breathtaking gradients. Ice stalactites watch over the entrance to a glacial cave, a silent meander in the heart of the earth. Here a skilful direction mixes audacity, mystery and nature. The light outside the tunnel is the home track.
The Klausberg ski park where Markus meets his old friends and smiles, which accompanied him on his path from slalomist to freestyler. A dream setting is the fresh snow that covers the fortress of the Tures Castle, where Markus' father was born and within whose medieval walls the tricks become more and more creative. Finally, the mining museum is the unexpected scene of millimetric slide passages that bring Markus back to the valley floor, where he slows down and stops in front of the sunset, with a huge smile on his face.
Ten thrilling minutes, which glued almost two million fans to the monitor, in just under two weeks, from the Milanese premiere where we met him.
How are your projects born, where does the inspiration come from?
I am inspired by many things, which gradually grow in my head. Sometimes I wake up at night and I get a hint, an idea and from here I start with the brain and it seems to me to bloom, for a moment. And it makes me dream. My inspiration often comes like this. Competitions are also a source of inspiration, the desire to win is.
Freeride, freestyle, there is always the word free in your life. What is freedom for you?
Even when I was alpine skiing I didn't like the coach saying what could be done and what not. I was always a little bit against authority. At the beginning, I still remember, what surprised me the most was seeing snowboarders alone, without adults, without coaches, dressed as they liked, without uniforms, putting a lot of effort into convincing the plant manager to build a snow park. In the end they succeeded, I was very happy and they taught me a lot; to have self-initiative, take the shovel and get busy. Something that today seems to me to be missing a little by young people.
Are you a mountain man, what is your relationship with her?
The mountain makes me feel like I have things under control. Skiing made me face everyday life with more pleasure, because it made me work behind the scenes. In everyday life I feel normal, sometimes maybe a little lost. On the other hand, in the mountains, I enter the state of flow and everything happens automatically, it's easier.
What is the limit for Markus Eder: something to respect or something to overcome?
The pleasure, the most beautiful and most important moments, have come out overstepping the limit. It is something to be respected when you know that overcoming it means risking dying, it is to be overcome when it makes you go beyond your comfort zone and allows you to improve your technique and experience.
What role does fun play in your life?
If there was no fun I would not know how to go on with what I do. It is the fun that makes the heavy light. I trained and I train a lot, I also did boring things, but fun has always managed to cancel this feeling and make me like everything I do.
A production like this is very demanding, physically but also mentally. How do you get over the pressure?
I overcome it by pushing myself. This past year has been very tough. I had so much desire to carry out this project, that I felt it like a burden on me. I absolutely could not get injured, because I would have compromised the work of the others, of the operators who believed in it completely and whose enthusiasm was a source of motivation for me. At some point, off the set, the sense of duty and that of pleasure had come to have the same weight on my personal scale.
It was a fight against myself. But then, as soon as I put my skis on, the world began to blossom again and in those moments I knew I would make it.
You are now a public figure, many follow you. Do you in any way feel compelled to be an example?
Sometimes I think I should be, but I can't ... Maybe also because of this: because my examples are the ones who don't give a damn about being examples.
Martina Folco Zambelli
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