Interski 2007

Interski Congress 2007, Yong Peong, Korea

Firstly what is it???

Interski is a conference that is held every 4 years (it is the 3rd largest Snowsports event behind the Winter Olympics and the X Games)

The last two congresses were held in Norway(1999) and in Switzerland(January 2003).

These congresses are visited by some 1000 to 1500 international visitors from up to 34 skiing nations around the world. They include the national demonstration teams of most of the INTERSKI member nations. The objective of Interski is to bring all these nationalities together to share the techniques and philosophies of there country through Workshops, Lectures and Demonstrations.

There are no winners and losers from this event, but it is important to perform well as the impression we leave with the other nations will hopefully help make it easier for New Zealand qualified instructors to find employment overseas. 

This year Interski was held at Yong Peong in Korea,

We spent about a week in Japan training at Happone ski area. This was where the slalom was held for the Nagano Olympics and it was perfect for training, wide medium steep piste with firm perfectly groomed conditions and a perfect fall line. No crowds so it was like we had our own training hill.

It was then on to Korea.

Yong Peong is one of the candidate cities for the 2010 winter Olympics so they pulled out all the stops and put on a fantastic event.

All the accommodations, eateries and conference facilities were right there at the bottom of the lifts.

The Demo hill had great firm snow so it held up well as well as having a good fall line, so it gave all the countries the opportunity to really showcase there skiing and riding.

The Demonstrations were at night and each country has 3 passes on their demo night, this was split over 2 nights with half the countries going out one night and half the other.

We were on the same night as the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan (to name a few) so unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to see what they were up to as there wasn’t much time between each run, but the following night we were able to watch the French, Austrian, Italian and Korean teams (to name a few). The great thing about this whole process is to see that all the major skiing nations are all on a similar wave length when it comes to high performance skiing and riding.

Other than being over there representing New Zealand the coolest thing was that there were 7 of us from the Rookie Academy there representing either New Zealand, Canada or the UK, so out of the 21 trainers that work for us in NZ a third are National Demo team reps, I doubt you would find a higher percentage of Demo tem members working for the same company anywhere else in the world!!!

There were 3 countries bidding for the next Interski in 2011. They were Argentina, Bulgaria and Austria …..It was close between Argentina and Austria with Austria (St Anton) winning.