SPORTS SPOTLIGHT
OK, so the 49ers blew it. But who cares about the silly Super Bowl when you have nine X Games medals and three Freeride World Tour victories to celebrate?! All of Tahoe should raise their glass to the astounding success of local pro freestyle skiers and snowboarders in recent contests.
Tahoe’s reputation for amazing snow may be suffering this season, but our legacy as home to some of the most talented athletes to ever lay ski tracks sure isn’t. The haul of medals local rippers brought back from the Winter X Games, held in Aspen, Colo. Jan. 26 to 29, had to be a new record for Tahoe. Out of a dozen X Games athletes from the region, nine returned home with blingin’ medals around their necks.
Notable medalists included Squaw Valley’s Nate Holland, who won gold in Men’s Snowboard X for the sixth time; Sierra-at-Tahoe’s Jaime Anderson, who won gold in Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle for the third time; Reno’s David Wise, who grabbed gold in Men’s Ski Superpipe as a heavy underdog; Truckee’s Nick Visconti, who snatched a bronze medal in Men’s Snowboard Street; and former Squaw Valley Freestyle Team coach Brita Sigourney, who took third in Women’s Ski Superpipe.
Moving from the manicured slopes of the X Games to the raw playing field of the big mountains, we also had two local athletes who’ve proven once again that KT-22 is the ultimate training facility. Squaw Valley shredders Ralph Backstrom and Jackie Paaso have been crushing the competition on the 2012 Freeride World Tour, the extreme ski/board contest series that tried to host a competition on Squaw’s Tram Face in 2009 and 2010.
Paaso’s hard-charging skiing skills delivered her the second FWT victory of her career at the second stop of the tour in Chamonix, France, on Jan. 22. She is now in third place overall in the women’s ski division heading into the final three stops of the tour.
Backstrom has been virtually unstoppable in the men’s snowboard division of the 2012 Freeride World Tour, having won the first tour stop in Revelstoke, B.C., taken second in the Chamonix contest, and then won again at the most recent event in Courmayeur, Italy. Not surprisingly, he is currently the tour leader. If you follow professional freeskiing at all, you surely recognize the Backstrom family name. Ralph’s older sister, Ingrid, has lived in Squaw Valley for many years and is one of the most celebrated freeride skiers on the planet. Ralph’s late brother Arne was also an ber-talented professional skier, having won multiple international freeride ski competitions before his death in a backcountry skiing accident in Peru in June 2010.
Arne Backstrom’s tragic passing rocked the entire ski industry, let alone his family and community in Tahoe. Ralph took his older brother’s death especially hard, having lost a major inspiration to keep pursuing a professional career that’s forged in danger. The tragedy took its toll on Ralph’s motivation last winter, but he now credits the reality check for some of his recent successes.
‘I definitely took a step back and thought about whether I should be doing this or not,’ said Backstrom about his headspace after his brother’s death. ‘I realized that I loved snowboarding too much to quit competing, but that I would never want to put my friends and family through what we went through with Arne. The only answer was to be more careful.’
‘So I look at my contest lines a lot harder than I did before,’ continued Backstrom. ‘I don’t really push my limits. I ride lines that I’m pretty confident that I can do safely. Many lines on a given contest venue could be the winning line depending on execution, so I try not to stress about whether my line will be the biggest or most exposed and just concentrate on riding smooth and having fun.’
Check out Backstrom’s winning FWT contest lines on YouTube and you’ll notice both his fluid line choice and his big smile. He is obviously having a ton of fun as he plummets down the course, launching off successive series of cliffs.
Glimmering eyes and ear-to-ear grins are undoubtedly the common denominator between all the local athletes that have excelled of late.
‘In most contests, the guy who has the most fun usually wins,’ said Backstrom.
No wonder Tahoe athletes are good at winning. Our trails, lakes, and craggy mountains have bred talented fun hogs for decades.
It’s not fair to give all the credit to our landscape for producing so many world-class athletes, however. Sure, Squaw’s KT-22 and Northstar’s new superpipe had something to do with our local athletes’ recent success, but it’s our communities support for such high-flying dreams that really sets Tahoe apart. If you have the talent and the drive, there is no better place than Tahoe to make a fun career path.
~ Comment on this column below.
