Markus Eder in Photos
In the past year, Markus Eder spent eight months off snow rehabbing a torn ACL. But you wouldn't know it from recent results. He won New Zealand's World Heli Challenge in August, then led Team Europe at the Swatch Skier's Cup and took sixth at Freestyle.ch. His film "Junkies on a Budget" won Best European Film at the International Freeski Film Festival. This week, it was announced that he made the invited athlete list for the 2013 Freeride World Tour. We spoke to him about his globe-hopping schedule, chasing success in the park and the backcountry, and why he speaks German even though he's Italian.
Looks like it's been a busy summer for you.
I couldn't be happier to be busy with skiing again. It feels good to be back after a long break. The best part was doing pretty much the whole trip with my friends from back home. Let the winter begin.
You won the World Heli Challenge after being off snow for eight months with a knee injury. How's the knee feeling now?
I just kept on going with the physiotherapy and with the training, even if I had a lot of downs where I thought, 'I'll never get back on skis.' Right now my knee feels really good even if it's swelling up a little once in a while. It just takes time, so I'll take it mellow for the next few months. But I think at the end this injury only made me stronger.
You also created a film part for "Junkies on a Budget" while you were injured. What was the filming process like?
Every team concentrated on only six minutes of art and action, which makes the movie super varied in my eyes. Our first trip was to Poland to film street rails, then we did another night powder shoot in Austria and a park shoot in Italy. Through filming we were struggling with broken generators and winches and minus-25 degrees in Poland. But at the end we got some great shots and put together a banger segment.
You've done backcountry freestyle and structured slopestyle comps. Will we see you competing in Freeride World Tour big-mountain competitions or trying to qualify in slopestyle for the Olympics?
I just love to do both backcountry and park. I think that's what makes me want to ski so much -- if I'm tired of one thing, I can still do the other. So I'm definitely looking forward to competing at the FWT and the Olympic qualifications as well. My main goal would be to compete at the X Games, which is going to be really tough. But I'll do my best and see what happens.
You're Italian, but you speak German because you're from Tyrol. What's the story there?
Before the first World War, we were one big Tyrol, which was a part of Austria. Shortly before the end of the war, Italy was winning and they had the opportunity to claim a part of Austria. So Tyrol got split up and South Tyrol became a part of Italy. At the beginning we got treated pretty bad, but nowadays we have our own rules and we are free to speak our language so everything is fine.
How's the skiing there?
Skiingwise, I'd say that we live in the paradise. We have crazy mountains, tons of snow and good parks, which Italy is not really known for. The freeski scene is still not too big but it's growing fast and there are a bunch of young guns coming up. I started freeskiing when I was about 14 years old. Before that, I was a ski racer for about 10 years but it got super boring. I just wanted to do fun stuff and not what the trainer said I had to do, so I finally quit. Then a good friend showed me the "Happy Dayz" movie from Poor Boyz Productions, which I watched every day the whole summer. My dad pretty much had to buy me a pair of twin tips for Christmas to keep me quiet. That's how it all started.
