STEAZE - Völkl Snowboards magalog 14/15 (English)

Chris Kröll The day in Livigno somehow felt strange from the beginning. It was a very big kicker; you had to jump 28 meters before reaching the landing!

First we watched the skiers who were shooting before us. Each of them was jumping way too far and we weren‘t sure how much speed we would need. When it was finally our turn around 3.30 in the afternoon Seppe Smith jumped first and went huge. 30 minutes later still none of our team had followed him and finally I pushed myself and dropped in on Seppe‘s line. However, I wanted to do one more speed check to not jump as far as he did. At the take off I was preparing for a backside 3 to check out the kicker but after half the rotation I saw the landing in front of me and knew I was too short and about to crash on the table. It crossed my mind that I had to aim for a controlled crash in order to not break both my legs and arms and seconds later it had already happened.

Surprisingly, I didn‘t injure my ligaments or knees due to my controlled crash and „only“ dislocated my heel breaking two metatarsal bones.

In extreme sports you can never completely eliminate the risk but I owe it to my gut instinct that I only suffered two major injuries in 13 years of professional snowboarding. Never lose respect for a spot, even if it looks easy; it can easily go down the drain.