USA freeskier Alex Hall and his deep bag of tricks
Team USA’s Alex Hall is among the favourites for a podium place in the Olympic debut of freeskiing’s big air event at the Shougang Industrial Park on 9 February – and there’s much more to the man than cheap tricks and endless spins, as Olympics.com found out in an exclusive interview.
Freestyle Skiing
We really shouldn’t call what Alex Hall does tricks.
But there’s no getting around the fact that there’s genuine magic to it. Not rabbits-out-of-hats and handkerchiefs-from-sleeves, nothing cheap or deceptive, but a kind of high-flying, risk-defiant conjuring of forces beyond easy understanding.
“The bigger tricks are always born of putting smaller tricks together,” said Hall whose bag of tricks – for lack of a better term – is virtually bottomless. “My favourite tricks are the ones that play along the more creative lines.
“The progression of the sport is too crazy so people are choosing just to spin more and more and more,” Hall, the son of a pair of college professors, told Olympics.com in January. “I like to think of something creative that no one else is doing even if it’s less spinning. The stuff you wouldn’t think of is what I like most.”
Hall can spin with the best (when needed)
This is not to say that the 23-year-old, born in Fairbanks, Alaska and raised in Zurich, Switzerland can’t rotate with the best when it’s needed. In Steamboat Springs, Colorado in December, he pulled a 1980 (five full spins) to win world cup silver. And that was just a warm-up for what came out at the Aspen X Games last month: A first-ever competition double cork 2160 (that's six full revolutions) to win gold.
Hall has a knack for pulling out something stunning on the last run. He’s known for it among his competitors – who he always prefers to consider his friends and compatriots in freeskiing and boundary-pushing. It’s evidence of one simple fact: Hall can beat you in many different ways.
Given a choice, he’d rather elevate the discipline – whether it’s big air or slopestyle – than one-up his pals in a throw-down spin-off.
“I still believe in learning tricks on the snow,” added the 193cm-tall Hall, who worked on a trampoline when he was young, but forgoes the airbags and off-slope training methods that have become commonplace in the sport. “An airbag can screw up the little details and there’s something to be said for the fear factor too.
Feeding on fear and reality
“If you learn to do it on the airbag, you won’t be scared of it,” added Hall, who seems to land his aerials, no matter how many stories up or how many rotations, with the ease of someone who's just stepped off a curb. “You lose some of that reality and some of that fear.”
You get the feeling that Hall – who’ll compete in his second Olympics in the slopestyle and big air events here in Beijing – doesn’t love competition skiing that much. Especially when they turn into spin-fests where amplitude rules the day.
“When I’m filming I can be my best and really innovate,” added Hall about the ‘video parts’ freeskiers shoot, usually in the backcountry or on improvised terrain. It's borrowed, as with so many things in freeski and snowboarding, from the world of skateboarding. “That’s where you can figure out your hardest tricks and the most innovative too. There’s more time to think and a lot of ideas come out there.
“Then I can take what comes out there [filming] to the competitions,” said Hall, who took the deeper portions of the COVID lockdowns as opportunities to “get out and ski every day” and not worry about competing. “One feeds the other and without it, I would burn out.”
Competition, camaraderie and creativity
Hall has an uneasy alliance with the whole notion of competition. There’s just enough competitive juices flowing through his veins to drive him to win -- to unlock his best and most awe-inspiring stuff. But he’s not one to pander to the judges.
“There’s a personal satisfaction you have to keep about it,” insisted Hall, whose video compilation 'Security Notice,' filmed in 2021, is an apt illustration of his wizardry and improvisation. “A podium is the cherry on the top, but always trying to ski my best is the first thing. I’m proud of winning, sure, but it’s not the main purpose of what I do.”
Balance is a word you hear often when talking to Hall. It’s the driving force that sustains him, much more so than grinding away and hard-charging at every podium, one eye on the world rankings and stressed about the Olympics.
“Having that kind of balance provides a sense of stability. It keeps it really interesting,” said Hall, who, by virtue of his talent, elegance and bottomless bag of so-called tricks, is among the favourites for gold in both the Beijing freeski big air debut and also his beloved slopestyle.
“I always want to come back and just progress my own skiing. Slopestyle, big air, rail jams – everything,” concluded the man who finished second in last night’s Beijing 2022 big air qualifiers and, maybe, just maybe, set some of his special magic aside for late in the finals. “It’s all really free and there’s a million ways to have success and have fun. That’s what keeps me interested.”