The Responsibility of a Professional Athlete

I welcomed one of snowboarding’s modern greats back onto the show for this episode: Elias Elhardt.

If you’ve heard our previous conversation, or watched any of his films, you’ll know Elias is a true snowboarding original. On the snow, he’s one of our most highly-regarded freeriders, respected by peers such as Travis Rice, and with the CV to prove it. But it’s off the snow that he is arguably having the biggest impact on the culture. He’s one of our great thinkers, somebody for whom snowboarding is as much a forum for internal examination as it is physical expression.

His series of films prove the point,. In Contraddiction, he explored his own relationship with professional snowboarding. In Narcis, he ended to Kosovo to explore that land’s recent history. And now, in Invisible Ground, he turns his attention to one of the most important topics of all: our individual and collective relationship to fear, danger, and vulnerability.

That last word is key when it comes to Elias’s work, and why he’s such a unique snowboarding artist. Few snowboarders have experience of the situations that have formed the basis of Elias’s career. Among those that have, those willing to explore these situations through the context of fear and vulnerability are rare indeed.

It’s why Elias’s work is so important, and why I was happy to welcome him back onto the show for this vital and enlightening conversation. Hope you enjoy the episode.

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