Matthias Giraud
I was born in Normandie on September 24 1983. Not necessarily the best place to start skiing!!! My parents had a vacation-home in Saint Gervais Mont Blanc, 30 minutes away from Chamonix in the French Alps. I was basically just a tourist who was skiing about a month every winter.My parents moved to Avignon, Provence when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It wasn’t the best place to ski either but was much closer to the Alps (3 to 4 hour drive) so I started skiing more and more. Around the age of 11, I started racing for Saint Gervais ski school during my breaks and on weekends mainly G.S and Slalom. At the age of 12 my parents had to sell their chalet in the Alps and skiing became the only thing I wanted to do. At 13 years old, I move to St Gervais to go to school and compete more. I was housed by friends and was skiing three times a week. I also started snowboarding a bunch but when I was taking my skis back, I was pretty much thinking like a snowboarder… and started throwing tricks with my G.S skis as there were no freestyle skis at that time. At 15, I completely stopped racing and entered a Freeride team in Saint Gervais and began to jump cliffs, doing front flips and backflips off cornices and cliffs - man it felt good!!! I also started competing in Derby’s (Combination of Big Mountain and Down Hill), hitting parks more and more, and skiing everywhere in Europe. About a year later twin tips came out and my goal was to be able to throw tricks off anything, in every conditions as well as skiing big mountain as fast as possible. Concussions and broken sternums (4 times) didn’t stop me. I was by then participating in events like the SNOW & D.J’S (big air and skiercross) to get exposure and doing Big Air Demos as well as Derby’s. I graduated high school and moved to Lyon where I entered a business school. It was the closest school near the Alps and it was the only option to be able to keep skiing and studying. But skiing and studying are hard to combine when your school isn’t in the mountains. I managed to do my internships in a ski shop at the bottom of the mountain in St Gervais, which gave me the opportunity to ski a shit load, get my ski instructor license and start teaching. I finally got the opportunity to move to Fort Lewis College with the help of Durango Mountain Resort – Purgatory for the locals! I left France at 20 without any hesitation and since then things went very well for me. I was able to ski way more, ride amazing powder and meet awesome people. I started competing in local big air, slopestyle, jibbing and halfpipe events as well as the US Extreme Championship in Crested Butte and skiing for photographers like Tom Stillo, Sven Brunso and Scott D.W Smith. Pictures started getting published in local, national and international magazines like Skiing, Backcountry, Ski and Board etc. I started to receive help from companies at 21 and moved forward in my career by skiing professionally at 22. I graduated Magna Cum Laude in Business Administration and Resort and Tourism Management on December 2006 and then moved to the Northwest in September 2007. The 07/08 season has been a turning point in my career as an athlete. I started BASE jumping with the help of Jesse Hall and ski BASE jumping recently which has open the door to many more exciting projects. |
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