ABM: The past season has been one of a kind
Ski slopestyle made its Olympic debut at Sochi 2014. Alex Beaulieu-Marchand became the first and only Canadian male to qualify for the inaugural event. Since Sochi “ABM” has been featured in a series of videos by his and Canadian Olympic Team sponsor Oakley. The Olympian shares his story behind the three-part series.
The past season has been one of a kind.
It was the first time slopestyle has ever had to go through Olympic qualifiers and it was definitely more intense then ever! With a solid Canadian freestyle team it was definitely not an easy task to qualify.
Olympic Qualifying
With a second place at Dew Tour last December in the first event of the year, it gave my season a good start. It opened the door to a potential Olympic spot for me, something that I never thought was possible before that.
Then I went on to all the other qualifying events where the pressure just kept on building up. I can’t even believe I made it through all these intense competitions without going crazy. Well some say I am always crazy but that’s another story.
Here is Born to Ski, the first of Oakley’s three-part video series to give you a great look at my pre-Olympic Journey:
Post-Sochi
After the Olympics, I stopped competing for a little while to work on the rest of the video projects I was part of. I went back home to Québec city to film some “urban skiing” with Stept Productions for their new ski movie “Ten and Two”.
For those who don’t know what “urban skiing” is, it consists of jumping around the city over monuments, onto railing and anything else your imagination can find a way to ski on around the city. This photo is a good example:
After that I went back to Breckenridge, Colorado to ski the slushy and awesome terrain park before the mountain closed. It was good to finally ski with no pressure and work on some new maneuvers for the next competitions.
Here is the second video of the series, Park Session:
Upcoming season
After the mountain closed for the summer I headed to Whistler and Mount Hood to ski the awesome glaciers for the summer. It was great to get the change to keep practicing new stuff for this new season coming up. I guess it paid off because I just got second in Freestyle.ch – a Big Air event in Zurich that just went down recently.
Now I’m meeting up with the rest of the slopestyle team in Austria to start another winter season.
Hope we all get some good snow this season and I wish everyone a lot of fun out there.
Part three of the Oakley video series featuring ABM will be posted here when released.
