Whether you’re a skier or boarder, if you haven’t heard of the Swedish legend and epic freerider that is Kristofer Turdell—now is your chance to hear from the FWT 2018 ski men’s champion.
January 18th, 2020 | by Jared Kubokawa
Events Hakuba staff writer Jared sat down with Kristofer Turdell for an exclusive interview at the Welcome Riders’ meeting before the first stop on the tour in Hakuba, Japan. The 2020 Freeride World Tour’s (FWT) Ski Men favorite and 4-year veteran of the tour hails from north of the arctic circle and was the FWT 2018 overall champion and runner-up in 2019. He’s back and looking to get on top of that podium once again by turning the heads of the judges with his technical steep skiing and aerial ability. Take a look at the video or read the article below to catch Events Hakuba’s exclusive interview with Kristofer Turdell.
©Freeride World Tour / Dominique Daher
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Transcription of the live interview from January 16th, 2020 at the Happo Kan Hotel, Hakuba, Nagano, JapanJared: All right, here on Events Hakuba we’re sitting down with Kristofer Turdell. Welcome! How are you?Kristofer: Very good, a little bit jet-lagged but I need a night of good sleep and then I’ll be fine.J: Welcome to Japan, so you’ve been to Hakuba before, of course. K: Yeah this is my fourth year in a row in Hakuba. J: You’re a veteran on the tour. Two years ago first place, second last year. What do you have planned for us this year, anything special? K: I guess I’ll try to go in the footprints of that, and try to do a little bit of the same. Keep the consistency. But it will also be fun to find new lines and be a little more creative.
©Freeride World Tour / Jeremy Bernard
J: You’re known as this really strong technical rider. Watching your line last year, you’re just very technical and very strong through such steep terrain. And this year on the south face it’s just not quite as steep as the north face last year. So do you have any freestyle or anything planned for us?
K: Yeah I hope so. I mean I haven’t even seen the venue yet. I was skiing on the other side today but from the pictures that they showed us at the rider’s meeting it looked interesting. So I guess there’s a bunch of stuff to find. To do good on a tour stop you need to have the technical skiing and also the freeride and freestyle stuff. And more and more jumps so a good run consists of all of it.
J: Absolutely yeah, and I think that you can pull it out.
K: Thank you! I hope so.
J: And you’re an interesting guy you go mountain biking, sailing and maybe study a little bit of science.
K: Yeah a little bit of everything. I guess I enjoy being outdoors doing different activities.
J: So you grew up north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. What was it like growing up, up there?
K: It’s a long winter, for sure. It’s a small town with a ski hill right beside it called Dundret. Five minutes away from my home I had skiing so we were up there pretty much every weekend and when school was over we had race training or went free skiing with friends. So that was the place I spent my childhood.
J: It sounds like a great childhood.
K: It was.
©Freeride World Tour / Jeremy Bernard
J: And so now the snow, the climate and the Earth…do you have anything that you would like to add about climate change? What do you think is happening?
K: The big picture, yeah. Of course, it’s happening. It’s tough to see, especially doing winter sports. You feel every year that you notice changes, probably because of the climate change. To tackle it, we probably need something that never happened before, a kind of collaboration between all the world’s countries and communities.
J: Yeah we need everybody together.
K: Yeah, which is pretty hard to see it coming and you see it discussed for 40 years. So the more, it’s in the media and the more people talk about it…and that’s happening so hopefully it will be enough to at least save some of the planet.
J: It’s interesting we’re having such a low snow year this year in Hakuba and actually Hakuba and Nagano declared a climate emergency in this area so we’re quite proud that they are joining other countries.
K: Yes, a bunch of countries have done that and there’s a lot of different and weird climate movements and weather patterns that even the scientists haven’t seen before and that’s worrying for us.
J: Well, let’s hope and work hard and see if we can get things back on track.
K: Yes and hope for some snow!
J: And I hope you do well this year on the tour. Good luck to you and all the best. Thank you for joining us.
K: Thank you.
©Events Hakuba / Macgregor Vidler
Events Hakuba is an Official Media Guest for the Freeride World Tour 2020. For more freeride action, catch up on the FWT20 season here.
