Homeboy’s Skiing Blog

Miracles do happen. A while ago Marko wrote how this season has seen couple of really sad events for skiing - the death of freeskier Billy Poole and the horrible crash of Matthias Lanzinger. Downhiller Scott Macartney had another scary fall in Kitzbühel but was very lucky to survive with minor injuries.

But this time one could say there was even more luck than on Macartney’s case. Even miraculoysly so. (Although, skills and experience played a HUGE role here too…read on, and you will find out how!)

(Image source: www.frifly.no - a great magazine by the way!)

Norwegian veteran freeskier Fred Syversen hit unintentionally the world record cliff drop, got buried in the snow and skied away to the waiting rescue helicopter. And at the hospital they only found that he has some minor internal bruising on his lever. This all happened in the Alps while filming for the new Nuit de La Glisse film. The cliff was said to be just a tad over 100m(!) high and Syverse’s speed at the take off around 80 km/h.

There is alot of speculation going on about this whole event. Seems like there is no footage around yet (at least in the web). Rumor also has that they’ve only captured a part of the huck on film.

The best piece of news I could found is here:

http://www.friflyt.no/index.php?pagenr=12&articlenr=54990

(This for all of you who know some Norwegian or “Scandinavian”…)

There is also a very long thread in TGR forum that contains very much (hilarious, as usually) off topic talk:

http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117301

If you don’t have enough patience (or time) to scroll it through, here is the best part, the words from the man himself. I won’t speculate more, here is the real deal:

“Some facts for u guys

Hehe,

Somebody told me about this discussion (could’nt read it trough, too much), and I like to add a few facts, the rest I will leave for the film and the pics. I can’t give you any proof, that’s not for me to decide.

My ski philosophy is that you should always stick your landings, that’s gonna progress our sport! Going this BIG we’ll leave to the BASE jumpers.

This was the warm up run at the beginning of the day during heli filming, and it turned out that I missed the end of my line with not to many meters (difficult routefinding cause of similar terrain features ). I let my skis go pretty much into the falline and picks up speed instantly, and just thereafter realises my fault and that I will go out something, probably huge.

The mind works amangsingly fast under stressed situations; breaking or trying to stop was no longer an option, it simply went to fast. If I had tried that I would’nt write this. So that left one choice; go for it, and do it right!

For a fraction of a second I thought this is it, but manages to get in a slight right turn to avoid the cliffs on my skiers left in the landing area. Then comes the take off at an amazing speed ( it felt like that ), I see snow underneath, and I decied that it’s not over yet.

In flight I tried to keep a position as long as I could, but airpressure finally pushes the skitips up and you end up in the backseat. That’s what I wanted as well, because landing it anything else than horisontally was out of the question!

I had an ABS avalanche back pack, and for those who know, it has a little metal/alumunium bottle ? near the lower back, not good if you land on your back. So I tilted my body slightly to the left before impact and that probably saved my spine.

I did’nt want this to come out, but with mobile pones around……

Nuit de la Glisse Films / Perfect Moment Clothing company, producer Thierry Donard
Photographer : Felix St. Clair Rénard
Measure of the jump 330 feet.

For the skiing watch Free Radicals : Rising and Snowblind and Nuit de la Glisse: Perfect Moment ”The Contact”.

And as far as I know; I am not 42 yet, but hope I will be.

Fred Syversen”

We hope a quick recovery for Fred and some safer lines in the future!

We won’t also speculate more on the topic f this is the new official record (you can see the current “official” here) or not…At least I’m pretty happy Fred is alive and hope he will get back on skis soon. Btw. Marko dug the Jamie Pierre jump - I didn’t and still don’t, too much. Dont get me wrong, Jamie is amazing skier and the one with big cojones for sure. I just don’t like that kind of skiing style that much (anymore) - I won’t go into details on this post but check e.g this one out, and you probaby understand why.

Ps. here is some great skiing from Fred himself, enjoy…

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