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Hailing from Mayrhofen in the Zillertal Valley, Austria, Wolle almost grew up with one foot on a board and the other on the mountain. Originally, he was the grommet of the now famous Ästhetiker Crew who deftly honed his skills from the first second he stepped on a board. His father oversees the huge Hydroelectric program in the valley which saw his mountain skills develop from the second he could walk. Early riding partners included the likes of Tom “Beckna” Eberharter, Friedl Kolar, Dieter “Tex” Steinhardt, Gogo Gossner and long time riding partner, Steve Gruber. The early years, partly due to mainly identical sponsors, Steve and Wolle were almost inseparable, both physically and in terms of style. Not un-similar to the Nic Müller/Fredi Kalbermatten combination, this partnership grew stronger again when Steve moved out to the Valley in the late ‘90’s moving in with Wolle. Shared passions for snowboarding, skating, surfing, and Playstation, the quietly unspoken constructive competition resulted in the pair of them becoming World renown as some of the best snowboarders ever to come out of Austria. Laid back, yet horribly hyperactive, Wolle continues to turn heads where ever he straps on a board. Weather it be pillows in Japanese backcountry, first descents in Alaska, spring kicker sessions in Mammoth, or secrete tree runs in his native Austria – Wolle does it all with unassuming ease. In 2008 he was awarded one of snowboarding’s highest honours, the Transworld Snowboarding Magazine’s ‘Rider of the Year’ and was voted Europe’s “Readers Rider of the Year”. Today Wolle is a proud father of his first child, a founding member of the Ästhetiker company, an eco activist, and has launched his own company constructing “Aesmo Powder Boards” made famous in several of the Absinthe Films. He is still hyperactive and still rocking !
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Growing up outside Geneva in Southern Switzerland, from humble beginnings, Romain de Marchi has gone on to become arguably one of the most influential contemperary riders ever to hit the World stage – epitomizing aggression riding and pioneering big mountain power freestyle along with Travis Rice. There is no backwards in coming forwards with Romain, both on and off the hill – it’s pedal to the metal, no hold’s barred, speed is your friend! Growing up under the tutorlage of Jim from ‘Pulp’ in Geneva, the riding crew of David Pitschi, Darius Heristchien and Jonas Emery pushed the envelope and developed their skills almost from when they could walk – all of them going onto successful Pro carree\rs. Joining the then on fire Airwalk Team, including the likes of Frederik Sarvell, Terro Ainonen, Rojer Helmstadstuen – Romain riding started to explode. Having been a cycling champion in his youth (he still has a crammed trophey cabinet at his parents place), it is little wonder that many people considered him to have ‘legs of steel’ - something necessarry considering he often went half as big again as everyone else on any given kicker. Go big or go home – he generally stayed out late, very late indeed. As his riding style, every time he gets on a board big things happen, but laterally clearing the US Open Halfpipe and several of the Hemsedal and Snowboarder sessions come to mind. But it was while filming for Absinthe’s “POP” in Utah with Travis Rice on Chad’s Gap that his most famous shot came from. After two days of building the in run and kicker, he nailed the gap and earning more covers than any other single shot since Ingemar Backman’s b/s air in Riksgransen in 1996 (7 covers world wide). In fact, it is hard to prove and harder to imagine a single snowboard publication in the world that Romain has not graced the cover at least once over the last 10 years. Play hard, party hard – and there has been plenty of that in it’s time. Romain is one of the enigma’s of the sport, true to his passion and true to his word. He is one of a kind...
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It’s hard to say if snowboarding happened to Michi, or if Michi happened to snowboarding – either way – what is for sure is little planning went into what ever happened! Growing up in Pontrasina in the Engadine, Switzerland, one of Europe’s snowboarding Mecca’s, his early influences and riding partners included the likes of Swiss legends Michi Frü, Reto Lamm, Dani Sappa, Franco Furger and regular visitors like Terje Haakonsen, Max Perotti and David Vincent to the snow inundated region. Born with a silver snowboard in his mouth and bindings on his feet, his stylish, carefree, cheeky and creative riding style reflected his personality, equally at home in the icy pipes of Stratton or with big mountain freestyle. While Michi became a world recognized rider, the fame and focus rolled off his back like a duck and water, maintaining an innocent enthusiasm that underscored his ability not to ride a snowboard, simply feel at one with it. From topping the podiums of the World’s most prestigious contests, to heli drops on the World’s biggest mountains, or completely lost in the World’s biggest cities, his carefree nature always . Road trips with Michi were a guarantee of adventure, his response one time after driving off from a contest leaving $3,000 in prize money on the roof of his car, he said, “Oh well....”. One of the truest legends of the sport.
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Hailing from a small village just outside of Vienna, the flatlands off Austria, Steve owes a great deal of his rise to fame to the Austria Cups, a their National Circuit in the mid 90’s. The Austria Cup’s didn’t launch him into international notoriety, but the crew of friends who soon became the Ästhetikers and an incredible incubator of riders spawning names like Gogo Gossner, Tommy ‘Beckna’ Eberharter, Friedl Kolar, Wolle Nyvelt to name a few. By ‘97, at the height of the SPC Summer Camp days, Steve moved to Austria’s emerging snowboarding hub, the Zillertal, a 45km valley boasting 12 resorts ending at the Hintertux Glacier. In 1998, shortly before the Nagano Olympics, Steve had reached the height of his competitive halfpipe career, coming 2nd to Daniel Franck in the European Championships. The next weekend, Steve was seen hammered a 6am on the outside of his hotel climbing the three stories to get back into his room only hours before coming second to Daniel again in the ISF World Championships. It was almost the last halfpipe contest he ever did. Like Terje Haakonsen, Steve boycotted the Olympics in disgust, watching the finals at Shin Campos’s place in Whistler, which in hindsight, was the start of his filming career. Steve’s riding style can be summed up in one word – STOMP! An uncanny ability to spot a take off and landing from miles away, his power, precision and pedal to the metal style are reminiscent of Kale Stephens or Travis Rice, when Steve stomps a trick it registers as if it was a 7.3 Richter earthquake halfway around the other side of the globe. If not snowboarding, guarenteed you will find Steve on a skateboard, surfboard or on his MX bike. To this day he is still killing it....
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Hailing from Lofer, a small village butted against the Wilderkaiser in Kitzbül Alps, Austria, Stefan Gimpl is a sort of enigma in Austrian snowboarding. Not really being part of the prevailing snowboards scenes of the time, Gimpl honed his skills at his home resort of Saalbach-Hinterglem in relative isolation to other riders of the same level. He ‘burst’ onto the scene follwing a night session in the Fieberbrunn pipe, busting 3m high b/s 7’s and leaving everyone sessioning the pipe that night thinking, “Who the fuck is that...?”. That one session nailed Gimpl a check out in Onboard Magazine at the age of 16. Gimpl’s international homecoming came shortly afterwards when he beat all odd’s taking out the world famous Air&Style title in front af a frenzied hometown crowd. This was the first of three Air&Style crowns making him the youngest rider to take the title and the only rider to have taken three consequtively. The king of pop, Gimpl always put on power riding performances busting bigger than anyone almost all of the time, and matching that with legs of steel, often stomping a trick several meters into the flat, going a third bigger than everyone on the day. One of eight brothers, Gimpl was not your a typical snowboarder of that time. Modest, quiet, polite and well spoken... He always did rather than said, and always said “Thank you.” after you had just told him that he had just blown your mind. A gentleman, and all round sportsman adept at anything he puts his mind to. Gimpl is an acclaimed golf and tennis player, and avid rock climber.
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Another internationally recognized rider that emanated out of the Swiss Engadine scene, Dani Sappa quietly turned heads through out his snowboarding career. Not surprising you might say, considering his riding partners including, Michi Albin, rode more for the love of snowboarding, friends and being in the mountains, than the hype surrounding a maturing snowboarding industry. Happy is a man who can make his hobby his job, and it had to be said Dani was one of the happiest people you would ever meet. Dani’s riding style is reflected in his personality. Solid, no fuss, individual and understated. He had the ability to make the difficult look seemingly effortless. At the height of his career, overnight, Dani suffered what could have been a life threatening blood clot on his knee. Emergency surgery saved both his life and his leg, in effect also changing his personal focus. Following rehabilatation, Dani finished his professional snowboarding career, finishing a degree in computer animation and is now a state of the art motion graphic designer.
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Hailing from big, bad Jackson Hole, Wyoming, an area renown for the number of World Class riders emanating from it’s ample bosom, Travis Rice has arguably changed snowboarding more than any other rider since Terje Haakonsen started going bigger backwards than all of his peers of the time. The son of a Ski Patroller, Travis was on snow from before he was toilet trained where the steeps and deeps of his home resorts nurtured and refined his big mountain skills while early riding partners including the likes of Brian Iguchi, Brodi Dowell, Eric Risland, Lance Pittman honed his freestyle skills. Travis’s personality could be described as a warped combination of ‘Denis the Menace’ and Barney Rubble on Ritalin – cheeky, totally focused and hopelessly hyperactive. As a relative unknown, Travis rocked up to Snowboarder’s Super Park in 2001 and simply blew minds, blew up and has never looked back since. His riding style is big, bad, forwards or backwards and often multiply inverted – few outside of Romain de Marchi can, do or want to keep up. Big mountain Heli follow cam freestyle, mega-stadium contests, parks, quarters and recently even halfpipe, Travis is guaranteed to pull the unexpected, produce the unseen and push the accepted envelope. Alongside his riding, Travis’s rambunctious personality and understated confidence have seen him to go onto producing his own flims and creating his own unique contest concept in his beloved Jackson Hole where the natural terrain happily teamed with nature to dump to dump 6-feet of snow the day before the event – producing Amped 27 level riding. There is no doubt the sport is not the same since Travis picked it and kicked it in his short 24 years, the only question left that is out to lunch is exactly where he will take it before he eventually hangs up his boots....
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Born in the sleepy coastal town of Bergen, Norway, JP was already demonstrating a love and a talent for the sport by the time he was fifteen. This talent granted him entry into one of Norway's Sports Schools for snowboarding at fifteen, before being head hunted the following year to a fledgling specialised Snowboarding School. In the early days, one of JP’s mentors and riding partners along with Mads was Daniel Mikkelson, who encouraged him to get out and travel more, which lead to his first international trip to Innsbruck in 1999 (as described above) and the scene was set for the second global Norwegian invasion since Terje– third if you count the Vikings! Being an annual participant at all of the early now infamous Hemsedal sessions, it was often Mads and JP who contested for the “Guinea Pig” of the year award (one strangely absent in award calculations) stepping up first on kickers that went daily from silly, to ridiculous, to stupid, to irresponsible, to “are you off your fucking head!?!” bagging more tricks in a single week than many riders do in an entire career. JP’s compact, flat spin, boned style in association with his Travis Rice style stomp made him one of the most effective, professional and rewarding riders to work with. Always cheeky and chirpy, relishing any opportunity in the early days to take his shirt off and break into the latest song he was working on for his yet-to-be-formed Boys Band, he soon graduated from the snowpark to the back country with devastating effect. Riding partners and mentors such as Gigi Ruff, Mads, Romain de Marchi, DCP and the late Jeffy Anderson took his confidence and skills to a whole other level. By the time he had bagged the Road Gap cover for Absinthe’s Film’s, “Transcendence”, one of eight covers that season, there was little surprise that he was voted in as Transworld Snowboarding’s “Rookie of the Year”.
JP consistently bagged some of the best rider parts for several years, before suffering a career threatening shoulder injury three years ago that resulted in his progression being put on hold but gave him time to work on his new project, “YES Snowboards” with Romain de Marchi and DCP. We spoke to him at home in Encinitas, California, and he said, “Damn Dude, I am feeling so good right now. Finally, I’m seeing past the shoulder and can see everything is possible again. I can feel the progress...” He said. “Damn, there were three years that I really didn’t know what to expect, not just for snowboarding, but just every day shit. It was tough, both physically and mentally, you know, sort of a lot of negative questions – if it over – and the like over that time, so I’m feeling on top of the world. It’s also given me time to fall in love with riding again, I’m really hungry for it every time we head out and I’m out there to prove stuff tom myself. It’s less pressure and more fun and I’m gonna be ripping it until I’m 50 or something...ha, ha, ha...that’s not true but you know what I mean. But if I was to thank some people for helping me get here, I’d have to give a heads up to all of the Media Department out there, especially TWS, who have been awesome to me over the years, and to the filmers and the photographers, particularly David Vladyka and Shane Charlebois – those guys lug the sacks and do all the work. Yo!” He concluded.
Fighting fit again YES we are going to see more of JP, YES in Absinthe Productions and YES riding something completely different.
www.yesnowboard.com/
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2010: The ‘Stompermatten’ has returned to ride with Absinthe after a hiatus and we’re glad to have him back. Saas Fee’s favorite son, Frederik Kalbermatten is considered one of the most dynamic riders in Switzerland’s of long-standing legacy of smooth operators. Schooled in the high alpine of the Swiss Alps and confident in all-terrain, FK made a name for himself on the World Cup halfpipe circuit and began filming with Absinthe at the very beginning. He appeared in our first film Tribal, and continued on delivering solid, precise freestyle action in Transcendence, Vivid, and Saturation. In one word, FK describes himself as “mellow,” but you’d never agree when you watch him ride. He literally attacks the fall line, combining his high-speed freeride approach with technical trickery. The only hint of anything “mellow” about FK’s riding is his enviably lazy and relaxed aerial style. Off the snow FK is just as dynamic. He is working hard to grow his streetwear brand Atreebutes—with his partner and fellow Absinthe rider, Nicolas Müller—into a sustainable, recognizable international brand. Fredi is also a DJ, for the past few years he’s been mixing up some tasty hip-hop, drum-and-bass, and most recently Dubstep sounds. He’s been featured at Switzerland’s foremost summer shred event, the Freestyle.ch and last winter he even DJ’d in Kamchatka, Russia in the middle of an Absinthe filming trip.
Most pictures by blottophotto.com - thank you!
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2010: Nicolas may well be the most naturally gifted rider to have ever strapped into a snowboard. Of course humble as he is, he would just shrug and deny this claim. He might however, argue that he has more fun than anyone else. Nicolas began as a young weekend warrior, traveling to ride at Laax resort from his home in the Zürich suburbs. Quickly consumed by his desire to ride, he thought of nothing else, rode feverishly and started entering competitions. Rising through the ranks of amateur halfpipe contests, Nico began his ascent toward the world of professional snowboarding. Fast-forward a few years to the beginnings of Absinthe Films, and Nicolas was there. He filmed for our first film Tribal, alongside one of his childhood heroes, Michi Albin, and he has been with us ever since. And in this time, Nicolas has filmed some of our most memorable material. From the faces of Haines to the forests of Japan, to mini-shred madness all over the world, Müller has stayed true to his passion for pure riding. He also become one of the most influential riders of his generation. Nicolas has recently moved to Laax where the whole journey began, from his home he can walk to the lift. From his new homebase, he is working toward becoming the ultimate Laax local.
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