TOPICS & TIMES
- Earthquakes & COVID-19 (2:11)
- Background, injuries, & finding his style (4:10)
- 2020 FWT 1st stop: Hakuba, Japan (12:15)
- 2nd stop: Kicking Horse, BC (17:55)
- 3rd stop: Andorra (22:45)
- 4th stop: Fieberbrunn, Austria (29:28)
- 5th stop: Verbier, Switzerland (35:19)
- Isaac’s comp skis (41:49)
- Change or keep the current comp format? (47:20)
- Free running / Parkour (51:37)
- What’s the best question I haven’t asked you? (53:19)
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As part of our Up & Coming Series, we had intended to talk to Isaac Freeland, because he is a very good skier and he was definitely on his way up. But then Isaac threw us a curve ball by not only winning the 2020 Freeride World Tour Rookie of the Year award… he went and won the whole thing.
So even if “Up & Comer” now feels like a bit of an understatement, we asked Isaac to take us through his first season on the Freeride World Tour and walk us through each stop. We also discuss what it was like competing against some of the biggest names in skiing; how he approached each particular comp; the rather surreal — and abrupt — end to this comp season, and more.
Watching the FWT this season, a few notable things happened: There were a couple sharky venues (Vallnord-Arcalis and Fieberbrunn) where the nominal favorites seemingly couldn’t put runs to their feet. In a third venue where they did have decent snow (Kicking Horse) a bunch of the top riders all attempted various lines through the Malakhov cliff on the rider’s left of the venue, and basically all but one ended up upside-down (and the one who didn’t crash outright won the event despite something that looked awfully close to a backslap on that same feature).
So basically, the people who were winning the individual events were also crashing so much that none of them were able to put together 3 decent scores out of the 4 venues, while Isaac did exactly that. None of this is intended as a criticism – as Isaac himself said you have to give yourself some margin to ensure that you actually can put down a run on the first try, and after rewatching all of his runs tonight I think that he did some very strategic risk-taking to ensure a good overall result this season.
Since I’m bored out of my mind and re-watching this year’s FWT competitions instead of skiing… Can we get some ideas for a verb that accurately describes whatever that is that Tanner Hall does in between tricks?
“Skiing” just doesn’t sit right with me.
On a more positive note: Isaac has a really solid turn in addition to his repertoire of tricks. Impressive combination.