Audio By Carbonatix
Salomon Freeski TV’s clip of paraplegic skier Josh Dueck hucking the first-ever Sit Ski backflip has us as stoked as any other trick we’ve seen filmed this season. Dueck — formerly a competitive freestyle skier before a T11 spinal chord injury in 2004 — won bronze in the Mono Skier X event last week at Winter X Games and won gold the year before. He’s also been in the news this month after the Switchback Entertainment film The Freedom Chair won Best Documentary at Powder Magazine‘s 2012 Powder Awards.
To fulfill his dream of revisiting the backflip, Dueck started in the Barn at Woodward at Copper, an indoor training facility at Copper Mountain where some of the world’s best skiers and snowboarders have been working out the kinks in new tricks over a foam pit.
Once he had the rotation down, Dueck decided to go big with it: He went home to British Columbia, Canada and had the Powder Mountain Snowcat operation in Whistler build him a big-ass kicker, practicing first over and air bag and then taking it to snow. On February 3 he went for it and the rest is… well, we’ll just let you watch the clip:
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Stoked? Here’s Dueck in The Freedom Chair, for good measure:
Here’s his 2012 Winter X Games bronze medal Mono Skier X final:
And here’s his 2011 Winter X Games gold medal win:
Now, duly inspired, go out there and do something awesome. What’s holding you back?
