After all years of skiing I have really never realized how fast and crazy a downhill race is. The 21 of February the 3300 meter long world cup downhill race in Saalbach took place. On first place came Matthias Mayer and also on second and third place there were Austrians – a great day to be in Austria! However, up to now my preferences have always been outside the beaten track in the back country in deep powder and steep mountain sides. It has been hiking and striving for the perfect ride with waist deep light powder flowing around you in a never ending wave. A few times it has happened with ideal conditions and I have been at complete peace those days – excited but also at absolute rest in my mind.

Well, I guess that would still be the case on a day with a big dump of powder but somehow the urge for high speed skiing came late in my life and I could now find myself enjoy skiing almost as much on the edge down an icy slope, which never would have happened a few years ago. It is great to evolve :-)! Click on the link to see the Final jump Saalbach downhill race 2015.

I once attended a job interview so standardized that I lost interest for the job during the interview – Say a thing that you are really good at? What kind of animal would you be if you were an animal? Say three things that you would bring a deserted island? And so it went on for an hour. I completely lost focus and when it came to the last question: Describe a really great day. My answer was: – That is the day when I get up and I drive to your company… Yeahh – right. That did not of course happen and the right answer would today have been: – That is the day I go down a world cup downhill race at full speed and survive! If you never have seen a downhill race at this level it might be hard to understand a statement like that but these guys are my new heroes and idols. They challenge every inch of the track and I watched the race track being prepared for a week by flooding it with water to build up the icy core and increase speed for the skiers. In the steep parts you could not stand still on a pair of regular skis without starting to slide down and that is where the downhill skiers fly over at more than 100 km/h – it is just crazy. I brought my camera one day to shoot some of the racers during their training before the race. Enjoy!