Finland: Hot bed of Snowboarding but not Freeski. Why??

Wait a few years. or maybe just a year or so.

Iisko "Lisko" Heiskanen was 2nd in Orage Europe Open pipe last year. Just behind Candice, Simon Dumond third...(so here you go). Btw. he goes big!

There are couple of others too. They're just probably too drunk (or just don't care) to compete and show up too much...:)

We have couple of pretty good alpinist/big mountain skiers too. But same applies here: they ski for themselves not fot the audience/media...as cliche as it sound. And are maybe too much into alpinist/extreme skiing compared to the commercial ski flick big mountain stuff (very different approach, I'd say)

But I guess there is some young guys coming soon to an international spotlight. Snowboarding's still very popular though...and the success of those said guys will make it even more popular all the time. Kids pretty much see snowboarding as a more appealin sport, I guess?

Our land is also pretty small market segment. Sponsoring is full business...so it's even harder for a young guy (or girl) from this kind of country to get international contacts/sponsors, even if he(or she) is super good. A skier/rider from a big country means more potential market for the company. Although in snowboarding our riders got some kind of head start and got big sponsors almost in the beginning of first freestyle snowboard craze, in the early 90's. So the Finns has been known since then in the "scene".

Ps. One other thing too...some people might even think newschool skiing as a "separate" sport but have you noticed almost all the new freestyle's biggest stars come from the countries which have strong (and old) ski culture: USA, France, Sweden, Canada, Austria (lately)...

I guess in snowboarding it was a bit easier for the countries like us to get success...cause all the participants pretty much started "from the same level", if you know what I mean?

Ok, here was my 2cents...maybe not all true but hopefully helped a bit?

Kalle Leinonen is a young, talented skier from Finland, who will blow up real soon. Check out http://www.kurtmovie.com/ for last year's free ski movie KURT from HDP Films to see some of Finland's best skiers.

Ive skied all over Finland. Give them a couple years and they'll be crushing it.

yeah we got super talent here...Leinonen world champ in half pipe and hes only 16...two years ago the finns were killing jacob wester in the pipe at gamblers weekend...

and newschool is kind of just starting to settle here...for example last year one could buy armada skis from one store that i know of in finland...mainly the brands that stores carry are rossignol, salomon and k2...

they've got a ton of amazing bump skiers. freeriders will come.

a matter of time.....

Kalle kills it and he is an ass funny kid..

I can't wait to see them. If they're anything like the snowboarders of Elekrep, they're pretty much the best.

how would i know

they got ill style