[Photo: Tero Repo/Red Bull Content Pool]
Xavier’s one of the most influential freeriders in the history of snowboarding. As a young buck he honed his speed management and edge skills competing in Boardercross (even going as far as representing France in the Olympics), but shortly after he transferred these talents to focus purely on charging big mountain lines with his unique brand of calculated lunacy. Standout movie parts with Standard Films were chalked off, as were contest wins in some of freeriding’s high-profile contests like the Verbier Xtreme. More recently he’s been producing his own projects – Timeline Missions, Degrees North and his most recent, raw DIY edits are all worth looking up – and his spirit for adventure shows now sign of dimming. We caught up with Xavier for a quick First/Last shortly after he’d finished sailing from Kamchatka to Japan…
FIRST… TRICK
Oh… the nineties. The first trick that I remember was the straight leg Stiffy. I definitely claimed it and liked it back then because i thought it was quite powerful as a trick. I used to watch David Vincent doing it, haha.
LAST… TRICK
I guess my last trick has been straight lining on sheer ice in the mountains. Certainly a different environment and perspectives, but I was stoked about it.
FIRST… TRIP
I went to Turkey with Nitro on a pretty adventurous trip. It was hard to find snow, and the lifts opened with good terrain but lots of moguls. It seems that it could still be what I am going for nowadays.
“The loosest thing was definitely the sailing at night alone in the cold with the boat shaking like hell and the vomit at the back of my throat.”
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