The Jon Olsson Super Sessions, aka JOSS was one of if not the most anticipated contests each and every season during the mid to late 2000s. Starting as a big air event in 2005, the Jon Olsson Invitational, or JOI, took the ski scene by storm. In just two years the event was named best big air event by Freeskier magazine. In 2008, Jon made an addition to JOI with the Jon Olsson Super Sessions (JOSS).
From March 26th to the April 5th, 2008, ten of the world's best skiers each paired with a photographer and a filmer would fly to Ãre, Sweden to show off their skills as invidual teams for a chance at winning 20,000 dollars.
Sammy Carlson, Dom Janiszewki and Nate Abbott took away first place, while Simon Dumont, Riley Poor and Blake Jorgenson took second place and Andreas Hatveit, Jon Hatveit and Vegard Breie took home 3rd place.
Here are the edits that won the first year of JOSS
(this shit will bring some of you guys WAY back.)
Sammy Carlson:
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/779180/Sammy-Carlson-JOSS-2008
Simon Dumont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO5bB_r6-HI
Andreas Hatveit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI2t-cn0oi4
2009, arguably the most popular year of the competition brought a new twist. This year would be a nations team event rather than teams made of individuals. The competition would also be held in Trysil, Norway as well as Ãre.
The teams were the following:
Team Norway (Andreas Hatveit & Pk Hunder)
Team America (Tom Wallisch & Simon Dumont)
Team Sweden (Jon Olsson & Jacob Wester)
Team Down Under (Jossi Wells & Russ Henshaw)
Team Europe (Laurent Favre & Henrik Harlaut)
Team Canada (TJ Schiller & Ian Cosco aka CHUG)
Team USA (my friend is a PRO!) (Colby West & John Symms)
The top 3 teams were
1.) Team Norway
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/779184/JOSS-09-Team-Norway--HQ-
2.) Team Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNrLp8eOZRY
3.) Team Canada
My personal favorite, Team America didn't make the cut of the top 3 but in my opinion deserved a spot up there. This is an absolutely amazing representation of what American freestyle skiing was back then.
Biggie mashup, tall tee's and afterbang.
The third, and unfortunately the last year of JOSS was held in 2010. It had a set up similar to 2009, with the addition of a "rookie" skier to each team. (a skier who has never been to x games) With the same teams as before and the addition of Team Newschoolers.
Team Newschoolers was made up of the winners from an online video contest that was held on here months prior to JOSS 2010. The teamconsisted of LJ Strenio, Gus Kenworthy and Matt Walker. Over 40 entries were sent in and 27,000 votes were cast to chose the team.
Team Canada, to even their own surprise, took way 1st place.
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/779278/JOSS-2010---TEAM-CANADA
Team Newschoolers took 2nd place with an absolutely outstanding video.
And Team Norway took 3rd place.
The rest of the 2010 JOSS edits can be found on Jon Olsson's vimeo page.
Here's the link: https://vimeo.com/jovb/videos/page:11/sort:date
With the power of Newschoolers and help through non other than Mr. Bishop, I was able to get a quote from Jon himself explaining the reason behind creating the Jon Olsson Super Sessions.
"The reason that I started Joss was because I wanted to bring the best in the world to session the best kickers in the world! On a Big air event you are always limited to have the event on a weather safe place, a place where spectators can reach it and find a size of the kicker where the riders can handle hitting it on an average weather day. With JOSS we had free hands to go all out for the riders and still generate exposure for the partners involved!
The most complex event I ever did but at the same time the most fun one!"
JOSS was an absolutely beautiful thing to happen to skiing. Everything about it was badass. Jon was able to bring the best skiers in the world together and make amazing films for 3 years. I'm happy I was able to go back and learn everything about the event. This is a piece of ski history that every skier needs to know about.
Thank you Jon, for putting these events together over the past 10 years. You changed the game. Another thanks goes to Jeff Schmuck for going so in depth on the coverage of JOSS each year. Without those articles there wouldn't nearly as much information about the event. Special thanks to Doug Bishop for lending a helping hand and getting me into contact with Jon.
As always, thank you for checking out this week's installment of Throwback Thursday, there was a lot of content to cover, I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I did researching and learning all about the event.
See you next week.
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