Miracles do happen, as this story shows. A while ago Marko wrote how there have been a couple of really sad skiing events during this season - the death of freeskier Billy Poole and the horrible crash of Matthias Lanzinger. Also downhill skier 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 in Scott Macartney’s case. Even miraculously so. (Though skills and experience played a HUGE role here too…read on, and you will find out how!)

Norwegian veteran freeskier Fred Syversen unintentionally hit the world record cliff drop, got buried in the snow and skied away to the waiting rescue helicopter. At the hospital they found that he only had some minor internal bruising on his liver. 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 Fred Syversen’s speed at take off was around 80 km/h.

Has Fred Syversen really jumped that high drop?

There is a lot of speculation going on about this whole event. Seems like there is no footage around yet (at least on the web). Rumors also say that they’ve only captured a part of the ride on film.

There is also a very long thread in TGR forum that contains very much (hilarious, as usual) off-topic talk. If you don’t have enough patience (or time) to scroll through it, here is the best part, the words from the man himself. I won’t speculate any further, here is the real deal:

Some facts for u guys

Hehe,

Somebody told me about this discussion (couldn’t 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 route finding cause of similar terrain features ). I let my skis go pretty much into the falline and picks up speed instantly, and just thereafter realized my fault and that I will go out something, probably huge.

The mind works amazingly fast under stressed situations; breaking or trying to stop was no longer an option, it simply went too fast. If I had tried that I wouldn’t 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 managed to get in a slight right turn to avoid the cliffs on my left side in the landing area. Then comes the take off at an amazing speed (it felt like that), I see snow underneath, and I realized that it’s not over yet.

In the air I tried to keep a position as long as I could, but air pressure finally pushed the tips of my skis up. That’s what I wanted as well, because landing it anything else than horizontally was out of the question!

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

I didn’t want this to come out, but with mobile phones 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

Safer lines for Fred Syversen in the future

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

We also won’t speculate anymore on the topic of whether this is the new official record or not. The current “official” record was jumped by Jamie Pierre. I am pretty happy Fred Syversen is alive and hope he will get back on skis soon. Btw, Jamie Pierre is an amazing skier and one with big cojones for sure. I just don’t like that kind of skiing style too much (anymore). I am more into new school stuff, like on Poor Boyz Production films.

Image source: frifly.no