X Says He Is Coming Back if Ski Becomes His Friend Again
Words by Kade Krichko
JUST Within THE Flat DOOR, the aroma hits. Passing the bathroom lined with dozens of battered park skis, it gets stronger, as if pouring directly from the reggae-laced speakers in Henrik Harlaut'southward living room.
Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep CDs litter the shelves, interspersed between X Games medals, Dew Tour trophies, and a Earth Cup Large Air Crystal Globe.
Harlaut and three friends engage in a violent video-game boxing; framed mag clips of Phil Casabon, Tanner Hall, Mickael Deschenaux, and Travis Heed hang on the far wall. Harlaut's friends lounge on the burrow, but he sits apart, manipulating his Xbox controller as he pedals a stationary wheel. He only plays if he tin sweat out a few miles at the same time—justification, he says, for sitting notwithstanding off the snowfall.
The aroma continues to broadcast, non from the table strewn with rolling papers and energy drink cans, but from the kitchen. Garlic. Ii years ago, Harlaut adopted a vegetarian diet in an endeavor to get stronger and leaner for ski season. He's been hooked on the bulb e'er since.
From contest to films like Slamina and Exist Inspired, to every backcountry booter and urban wall ride in betwixt, Harlaut has redefined what freeskiing is supposed to await like over the by one-half-decade, putting accent back on style when the sport was destined for Olympic spin-to-win monotony. Only while it's impossible to forget Harlaut's domination of our sport, his uncharacteristic advent makes information technology easy to overlook the steps he took to become in that location.
At 27, this is a man who just capped the flavor with a Dew Tour win, 2 X Games golds (and a silver), and an Olympic appearance. It was almost May when I met up with him in Principality of andorra where he out-built, out-hiked, and out-hit anybody on a step-upwardly jump for nearly ix hours in the backcountry. At present, he was biking.
"I just want to keep going," he explains after dinner. "When I dearest something so much, when I know that what I'm best at in my life is skiing, I just desire to take advantage of every opportunity to see how far I tin push information technology."
Since Harlaut moved with his family from Stockholm to Are, Sweden, as a wiry 9 yr former, he has poured everything into the sport—studying ski movies as if they were Sat prep courses, and chasing idols around the earth just to exhale the same mountain air. All the same skiing has never really known what to make of him. A dreadlocked, perma-smile Swede that speaks similar his favorite former-school rappers, Harlaut is often bandage as a extravaganza rather than competitor.
Out of sight are the 8 daily hours of self-driven, off-flavor gym time. Overlooked is the option to alive thousands of miles from friends and family to train year-circular in Andorra—a country barely on the map between France and Kingdom of spain. These are the types of moves that have made Harlaut one of his sport's well-nigh recognizable stars—and that have isolated him in the process. Equally he pushes further and further away, Harlaut—for better or worse—is skiing in a world all his own.
"I Think HE'S Ever KEPT Truthful TO HIMSELF," says Casabon, Harlaut's long-time friend and ski partner. "Information technology might take held him dorsum at times from the heights he could have reached, but now he has made people accept it."
Casabon has witnessed Harlaut'southward rise firsthand. For over a decade, the introspective Quebecoise and energetic Swede have formed the nigh dynamic yin and yang in skiing, their skate-influenced urban style inspiring a whole new brood of park and street skiers.
Dropping classic online videos such as Muddy Winters, the duo honed their craft in parks and local hills, proving that progression didn't need a heli crash-land or a film budget. In 2012, they galvanized a grassroots following with the Inspired Demo Tour, traveling by van to 50 small ski mountains between Maine and South Dakota in just 66 days to hit rails and butter small kickers with local kids.
In the middle of that tour, Harlaut caught a plane to X Games in Aspen. After traveling countless highways and skiing icy molehills for the by month, he stepped into the large air arena and landed a nose butter triple cork 1620—a flim-flam he'd never attempted until that nighttime—to win gold. That's right, Harlaut performed an unprecedented trick on the biggest stage in freeskiing just a few days after sessioning 300-vertical-foot ski hills in the Midwest alongside tall-T wearing kids obsessing over his and Casabon's unconventional mode.
"He's on this phase where every fucking athlete is a direct arrow, and he's a zigzag type of dude," explains Casabon. "I remember he's a person with the greatest willpower I've ever seen in my life."
And nevertheless, with all of this success, by his own volition, Harlaut doesn't even have an outerwear sponsor. While ski apparel has moved on to flexible fabrics and lighter construction, he however prefers the baggy pants and oversized T-shirts fabricated popular by freeski royalty like Hall and Deschenaux in the early 2000s. Nowadays, that ways the virtually busy athlete in freeskiing chooses to buy most of his gear on eBay.
"He doesn't desire things he doesn't stand for," explains Erik Harlaut, Henrik'southward father, who handles much of his son'south sponsorship deals in between running his family's champagne business in Are. He says Henrik has a unlike fix of values when it comes to business organization.
Instead of a souped-up mountain truck, he drives a 1987 BMW sedan with a ski rack. Rather than switch-out broken skis for a new pair midseason, he'll conform his stance or tweak an edge dorsum into place.
As the youngest of three brothers, Harlaut grew upwards playing hockey and skiing slalom exterior of Stockholm. While trying to proceed up in those early on years, he adult a strict competitive side. And though his parents pushed him to pursue his talents in slalom, Harlaut latched onto freeskiing after fellow Swede Jacob Wester showed him his first videos of Hall and the Poor Boyz coiffure during a summertime race camp in Italy. Days later, the then 10-twelvemonth-old was landing his first backflips.
He returned to Sweden a skier possessed, watching and emulating whatever ski picture he could become his easily on. By 11, he was landing cork 900s.
"He was a very observant and listening kid," says Deschenaux, the Swiss freeskier known for his own novel style who befriended Harlaut at a Zermatt summer ski army camp in 2006. "You'll spotter him scalpel out every little matter to learn—the move, the rotation, the takeoff—and and then he'll put his own style on it. He took the best, and made it amend."
Harlaut studied Poor Boyz hits Propaganda and Happy Dayz with so much fervor that he not only learned new tricks but a new linguistic communication, picking up English from the skiers in the segments, and then from the movie soundtracks. The immature Swede was particularly drawn to hip-hop, remembering the sounds of the lyrics, so eventually putting sentences and songs together.
It was music that brought him together with Casabon in 2007. While competing at the European Open up in Laax, Harlaut and Casabon kicked off a friendship steeped in Redman, Method Human being, and the Wu-Tang Clan. They even adopted their own hip-hop monikers: Casabon as "B-Dog" and Harlaut as "E-Dollo."
Known as "B&Due east," the pair gained the recognition of childhood hero Hall and producer Eric Iberg, somewhen teaming up on films like 2012's The Education of Style, and 2016's BE Inspired.
"When yous see Henrik, information technology's just him, he doesn't get told what to practice," says Hall. "It's pretty amazing to run into a kid come out each year like that…it'southward going to exist a long fourth dimension before anyone comes along similar this once more."
As Harlaut was realizing his dream of skiing and working with Hall, his competition career was also taking off. Where nearly struggled to balance competing with a demanding film schedule, Harlaut found fuel. In addition to his 2013 X Games gold, Harlaut cruised his style into slopestyle'due south first Olympics, qualifying for the finals for Team Sweden.
Information technology was there that Harlaut enjoyed his most recognized competition moment. After landing his second slopestyle run at the Sochi Olympics, he took the opportunity to salute his favorite rap grouping on live television, yelling, "Wu-Tang is for the children!"—an ode to the late rapper ODB. Harlaut eventually finished 6th, but became an overnight media awareness.
Within a few days, Wu-Tang'southward Method Man had reached out via Twitter, and news stations around the earth picked upwardly the story. The outburst wasn't planned, but the call created an unlikely and straight line between skiing and hip-hop that has endured for years to come (Wu-Tang'south Masta Killa fifty-fifty emceed Harlaut and Casabon's B&E Invitational ski outcome in Les Arcs, France, in 2015). More than importantly, as freeskiing was looking for its Olympic footing, Harlaut thrust it into the collective mainstream.
"He basically won the first Olympics," says Casabon. "He was the most talked most in [Sochi] in terms of printing and coverage—he reached the target."
FOR ONE OF SKIING'South About VISIBLE CHARACTERS, Harlaut is difficult to track downward in person. He's not dismissive—he merely prefers to ski and allows outside communication fall by the wayside. Later four months of WhatsApp letters beyond a handful of countries, I finally tracked him down in the parking lot of Grandvalira. It's the largest resort in Harlaut's adopted home of Principality of andorra, minutes from his apartment, and totally empty.
"I like that I can go a scrap under the radar here," he smiles. "Information technology's not a scene. People are stoked on skiing, merely everyone is doing their ain matter."
Due to steep income taxes at abode in Sweden, Harlaut took a detour to Andorra in 2014. Applying for and earning an official invitation from the authorities as a professional athlete, Harlaut completed the legal path to becoming an Andorran resident, finding not simply tax leniency, but a country with more miles of ski slope than actual route.
Like Blackness Sabbath recording in Clearwell Castle or Muhammad Ali training in the secluded Pennsylvania wood, Harlaut has developed his masterpiece largely away from the world, tucked into the Andorran Pyrenees. From April until early July, he'll sled uphill to build and hit kickers with a revolving crew of skiers and filmers. When the snow melts, he'll spend his days strengthening with physios, hit the gym, and grooming in Andorra's ski-specific ramp and trampoline facility. Side by side season, he'll ski in Sunset Park by Henrik Harlaut, the terrain park Grandvalira named after him. The country has go Harlaut's personal mountain incubator—no distractions, just skiing.
Over the concluding few years, that atypical focus has paid off in trophies and accolades. Last season, after winning the Dew Tour slopestyle and a double gilded in Ten Games Slopestyle and Big Air, he was even nominated for Best Male Activeness Sports Athlete at the ESPYS (halfpipe skier David Wise concluded upward winning the award).
But it'due south also come up at a personal price.
"If y'all want to be the all-time of all time, you have to set bated a lot of things—friends, family," says Casabon. "I think it has isolated him."
Instead of traveling back to Sweden to visit friends and family unit, Harlaut offsets the craziness of his travel schedule by staying in Andorra. While his ski circle makes time to come up to him every year, he spends many days alone. He doesn't political party, but uses that fourth dimension to push himself physically, maintaining a laser focus on eating well, grooming, and skiing.
Information technology's a cycle that has elevated him into the elite of the sport, and just when it seems like in that location's nowhere else to go, Harlaut has continued to go better.
Notwithstanding, while he dismisses any feelings of burnout, those around him wonder what the future looks similar.
"I'm looking forwards to the day—and I know it's going to come—when skiing is going to have less of a place in his life," says Casabon. "Hopefully when he's done with his goals, he can focus on some other aspects of life. He'south a genius and he can practice everything, it but depends where his focus is. Right at present, it's skiing."
Information technology's a day that volition likely stay on the distant horizon thank you to the one prize that continues to elude him: an Olympic medal. Harlaut planned to give upwards contest subsequently the Sochi Games, simply declining to podium relit his competitive flame. With his eyes on PyeongChang, he won every event there was to win leading upwardly to the Games, but again, missed gold at the Olympics. Now, Harlaut talks openly almost 2022.
"To represent Sweden [has always been] a dream of mine," says Harlaut. "Skiing has always been individual, not state. Now that they want countries to win, I know in that location'due south a lot of people in Sweden that want me to do well."
Yet with that shot at Olympic gold notwithstanding on the far horizon, Harlaut has started directing his talents into other realms, and the results are already bearing fruit. On his first trip to Alaska with Hall this by spring, he turned heads in heli camp, infusing his freestyle full-blooded into steep Alaskan faces and scratchy snowpack.
"The kid only slayed information technology," says Hall, adding that instead of taking it like shooting fish in a barrel on his outset trip to harrowing terrain, Harlaut was throwing double corks off mid-run wind lips. "He went through the whole procedure similar he'd been doing it for years."
Harlaut says he doesn't look too far into the future. Though he imagines spending the remainder of his life in the mountains, he chooses to carve out his legacy 1 day at a fourth dimension, without "skipping steps." He created his own habiliment make, which, as of now, is primarily lifestyle clothes, and started hosting ski camps in Principality of andorra. He hopes he can add a few more next season to connect with skiers from outside of Andorra, only hasn't locked down any plans yet.
Only if the Alaska trip is any sort of preview into Harlaut's next chapter, Hall knows it could be a long time earlier his friend ever slows down enough for the rest of the world to catch up.
"Henrik is on a mission correct at present," says Hall. "The lone work that that man puts in all the fourth dimension, I recollect he really enjoys information technology. He'south just getting started."
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This story originally appeared in the December 2018 (47.four) result of POWDER. To accept great stories like this delivered correct to your door, in impress, subscribe here.
Source: https://www.powder.com/stories/henrik-harlaut-profile/
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