Welcome to Paradise Para Snowboard World Championships 

Greetings folks,

I’m en route home after a great week in Big White, Canada. A place very dear to me, since on both of my previous races here I medalled.

This time, not so much. The world’s best were there, I knew from the get go this would be extra hard.

We experimented with some prosthetic leg tweaks in training, and I can honestly say I improved a lot after 8 days there. Even though my results don’t show that, but coach & I agree that I did well. I fought hard!

It was my first Para Snowboard World Championships, and I was excited! Unfortunately, for the 1st time these races weren’t shown live on TV or YouTube. That saddened us a lot. 

The talent level was very high, there was no room for mistakes -which I did on the Snowboard Cross race:/  I had an ok qualification time, and started my heat very well, chasing the 1st place rider pretty close. Then one mistake, I didn’t absorb a landing from a step up jump, and was overtaken very fast. That heat ended my race, couldn’t advance fwd and finished in the 11th position. 

On the Banked Slalom race, the course was a workout! 23 turns, every run would leave you gasping for air, it was epic! But, a lot of those turns were super tight, making it really hard for a big guy like me. My technique never “clicked”, and I finished in 10th. It’s just such a unique racing type, and I never had/have a lot of training for it, so it really shows on my performance. It’s something hard to replicate, these banked slalom courses. So it’s only when I get to these races that I train on them…

I know I tried hard and did my best. This was a great experience and I’m going back home knowing I grew as an athlete. It was a great season closer, and hopefully my ranking will improve a bit (compared to those that didn’t come). Soon we’ll know, once they update the rankings. And around May we’ll know if I qualified already for Milano Cortina 2026!!