Interview with VALENTIN RAINER

Valentin Rainer, age 24, from Tirol, Austria is a former ski racer who took to freeride as a teenager, competing in his first competition in 2016. After joining Ski Club Arlberg, and working with SCOTT legend Stefan Hausl, Rainer soon grabbed attention as the one to look out for, and he quickly rose through the ranks of freeride competitions. In 2021, Valentin embarked on his rookie year on the Freeride World Tour. When he didn’t make the cut in 2022, it was all eyes on being back for 2023. After a committed season at the Freeride World Qualifiers, he qualified in 1st place, ready to take on the toughest comps in freeride skiing once again. The 2023 season was filled with challenging conditions, technical faces, and some huge tricks, and today Valentin Rainer secured the title of 2023 Freeride World Tour World Champion.

You’re 2023 Freeride World Tour Champion! How does it feel?

Feels insane, really. When I say that I am World Champ I still can’t believe my own words... but it makes me super happy and proud! It was my number one goal in freeride competition.

How did this season go for you overall?

Really good, I would say. It started in a disappointing way in Baqueira, Spain with a 15th place finish but from there everything worked out pretty good. I went on to achieve 1st place in Andorra and 3rd place in Canada, and those were definitely the highlights of my season. The 4th place in Fieberbrunn finally led me to bring everything together for this moment.

The biggest challenge is that we had a winter with not a lot of snow and most of the venues didn’t really have a base. It was really hard to even make all the competitions possible. It started off with Baqueira, which was a bit scary to ride because there were a lot of sharks, but still worked out good. I completed a good run but did not score well... so my biggest personal challenge was to get back into a good mindset after the first competition.

You’ve put down some huge tricks this season. How do you approach each comp? How do you handle the fear/pressure?

I always try to find a line that I am really comfortable to ride and with not too many risk factors. Sometimes I tried to go for cliffs that I have jumped before and pull tricks on those. If I ride on competition faces that I have done before I try and go into the same region so that at least I know the steepness and main features of it. Overall I always try to find lines that fit my style and that I am confident with. I started working with Stefan Häusl after I quit my ski racing career to switch into freeride. I learned a lot from him competition-wise, from how to find and scope a line and on the mental game side. The fear sometimes gets me and he really taught me how to deal with these situations.

You didn’t make the cut last year – how did that effect your mindset going into this season? How did you prepare for this season?

After not making the cut last year I had to go back to the Challenger for men, and I managed to qualify again with 3 strong runs and that made me super confident. Looking back, I believe that was the best thing that could have happened... if I had made the cut last year, maybe I would not be World Champion right now. The Challenger also led me to meet my good buddy Max Hitzig, who has also had a really good season. Together we are a very strong team and that made the difference. I prepared the season with a lot of training in summer... and then of course a lot of skiing in winter!

What do you think makes the Freeride World Tour so unique?

You cannot compare freeriding with any other sport, because it’s one that you never do alone, but always with friends. It’s just the same with freeride competitions, all your competitors are your friends, and you ski together all the time. That’s why even when we are competing against each other, we are really only competing against ourselves. That’s why we are always happy for each other when we put down our runs.

So, what’s next for the 2023 Freeride World Tour World Champion?

For now I definitely want to go for another season as I really want to compete on the Bec des Rosses, I really want to have a good run on the Bec, it’s my end goal. But besides competition skiing, I really want to get more into filming and make some sick film segments!