Skiing Lessons Near Me

1. Edge Ski Magazine Jon Sallinen, a daredevil of several disciplines, has set himself a tough goal: “The Beijing Olympics are my main goal.” The halfpipe-skier Jon Sallinen has settled in Colorado. Jon answers the call in Keystone, Colorado. - My base camp is in Aspen at the moment. From there we travel to training camps in different locations. Most skiers in my training group live near Aspen, the Helsinkian tells me. This comment describes Sallinen’s situation right now. The 20-year old lives and practices in the Colorado mountains. Because of good reasons. - Here you’ve got the best pipes and coaching in the world. The Finnish Olympic hope didn’t travel to the US just by chance. - I studied at CRMS high school for two years. During that time I got to know the places and people here. And this got me even more interested in pipe skiing. Towards Beijing Sallinen enjoys still skiing all the freeski disciplines. Although he hasn’t had that much time for slopestyle and bigair lately. - When I came here a couple of years ago, many did also ski halfpipe. And I noticed that I’m not that good in this discipline, although I’m the Finnish champion. That inspired me, I wanted to be on the same level as these other guys. This youngster has a clear athletic goal. - I’m practicing for the Olympics at the moment. And if there’ll be any world cup comps this season, I really want to compete. As Beijing is my main goal, I’ll have to get the spot through the world cup competitions and country quotas. Covid-19 is a teaser The international competition calendar for pipe skiing is almost empty - World Cup competitions were scheduled for December and January. But those were cancelled. We’re hoping that some rescheduled competition might pop up, just have to wait and see. There will be some Nor-Am competitions here in the US, where I’ll be competing. There are some benefits with the slow competition pace - I have been practicing more than ever and with good results. But I still hope for competitions, so I could show off new tricks. For Internal Use Only

2. The ski resorts are open in Colorado - Luckily we now have a different situation than in Spring. At that time they had to close all the resorts. Now you have to wear a mask in Copper and can remove it only during your practice run. And there are very few restaurants, where you can have a meal, Sallinen tells me. Multitalented Sallinen is a multitalented athlete. He’s familiar with all the freeski disciplines and as younger he also did alpine skiing. - I started my skiing career with slalom and GS. Later on I switched over to freestyle and started all the freestyle disciplines at the same time (big air, moguls, slopestyle and skicross), Sallinen says. -Serena, Talma and Sappee, were the hills where I did ski. Dad drove me and my big brother to the slopes and we practiced as often as possible. We challenged each other all the time. When one of us did a new trick, the other had immediately to do it better. - And as a junior I also played soccer, team handball and floorball. Extreme jumps Skiing and ball games are quite normal disciplines for the Finns. But extreme diving isn’t that common as a hobby, as for Sallinen. - I’m always thinking of jumps and flips, for instance when I’m swimming I always do some high diving. For instance at the Helsinki swim stadium from 10 meters (abt 32 ft) and so on. A couple of years ago I saw Norwegians do some extreme diving in their dodsing-style and got inspired by what I saw. Last August the first ever Döds-competition was arranged in Helsinki, and Sallinen took of course part in that. - I just wanted to dive for fun, but placed second. As the winner was Norwegian, and already had a spot in the World Champs, I got a Golden Ticket to that competition in Oslo, Norway. There I was the best non-Norwegian and placed totally fifth. Backflip trick on skis On the second last day of year 2019 Sallinen released a trick video on TikTok, that got several millions viewers. On the video seven skiers do a joint backflip hand in hand. - With my big brother we did hand in hand backflips already as juniors on a summer camp in Norway. Now we did it once more at Ruka resort, we started the two of us and asked for every new lap one more skier to join. Finally we were seven, as there was not room for more on the kicker. I loaded the video on TikTok, and it went viral! It is a wonder that Sallinen hasn’t had any serious injuries with all these tricks during the last years. And now the goal for the multi-talented athlete is halfpipe in the Beijing Olympics For Internal Use Only