Empire Attire

By Malinda Mosholder

If you’ve been enjoying a lot of skiing in recent years, and fancy yourself a pretty spiffy individual out on the slopes, you need to be asking yourself only one question:

“Do I understand, and pay proper respect to, those who have come before me?”

I’m talking about The Godfather of Newschool Skiing, and the rest of the founding hierarchy…The Apostles, The Head Honchos, The First Ladies, The O.G.s, The Innovators, The Founding Fathers, and Steeze McGee.

Let’s start with The Godfather, Mike Douglas. Mike certainly did not invent the twin-tip, that accolade goes out to Olin, bursting onto the 1974 freestyle scene with the magnificent Mark IV Comp. For all that Mike Douglas did not do for freestyle skis in 1974, he more than made up for it in 1998 when he took a prototype twin tip with razor-sharp edges to Salomon, fully intending to use it as a weapon if they denied his dreams of bringing the option to ski backwards to the world (the previous statement may or may not be true). Luckily for Salomon and all of us, they saw his crazy vision, and in 1998 dropped the Salomon 1080s into a snow sports world dominated by single-planked vanguards and Bogner-adorned skiers. All the kids who wanted more than mogul skiing heaved sighs of relief.

What better way is there to show the world what’s in your bag of tricks then through super human videos? Shortly after the skis came the movies, and one of my old-school Newschool favorites is Royalty from Eric Iberg with Poor Boyz Productions. My family was, and will always be, low tech, so it made perfect sense that I first owned it on VHS. In other shocking news, I wore the tape out within 2 years. All the usual suspects of freeskiing lore are featured here, including: The O.G.–Mikael Descheneux, Steeze McGee–Eric Pollard, The Three Phils–Belanger, Dion, Larose and Empire’s own—Candide Thovex. Stop everything that you are doing AFTER finishing this article, and go buy it.

Did worthwhile ski movies exist before Royalty? Of course. Have there been mind-blowing movies since then? You better believe it. While we’re being honest here, there is a fat chance we can all agree on a single best founding skier or movie. What we can do is watch, learn, and respect. It’s not always about spinning as fast and as much as you can while throwing in 10 different grabs. Slow it down, float a massive crossed-up 360 over an 80-foot jump. Grab that tail as long as you can, simply because you can.

VISUAL STIMULATION/HISTORY LESSON

Check out The Godfather and his French Canadian Apostles recant when they became legends, and show off some other inventions, the D-Spin and the Misty Flip, in this Salomon 1080 history lesson. Watch it, get goosebumps, and watch it 500 more times.