The day I left for Austria, Will from work showed me a pretty crazy video of a guy doing huge front flip off a kicker (to the uninitiated, that’s skier lingo for a big jump). The crazy part is that he does it nude and then gets totally laid out on the landing. I’m pretty sure your skin gets a nice little burn from that.

But as it turns out, I’m having dinner the night I arrive and my buddy Körni knows this guy! The real story of it all is that Teddy Berr really is a big mountain skier and his calling card is hucking cliffs, not park tricks. So when he was asked to jump off some kickers at a festival, he knew he couldn’t wow the crowd with any tricks. He practiced the front flip once with clothes and then for the actual show, as any reasonable person would do, he did it fully nude.

Unfortunately, that has the consequence of better aerodynamics in the approach, thus a higher speed into the jump and of course a longer distance traveled in the air. When you then have a huge drop into an ever flatter landing area, it becomes hard to stick the landing. While Teddy seems to ski away just fine on the video, his back started to hurt that night and it turns out he broke a few bones in it. Thankfully he’s ok now.

Here is the video and thanks to Körni for the story.

Teddy Berr massive 50 meter Front Flip at Nine Knights from headbud on Vimeo.