Crystal Globe series: The Valentino Guseli interview

Maybe it's time to just start referring to it as The Season, because at some point along the way we ran out of superlatives to describe what 18-year-old Australian Valentino Guseli achieved in 2022/23. But before we get into our recent interview with the young man who climbed to the top of the pyramid to become the world's best all-around competition snowboarder, we'd like to present a partial list of Val's accomplishments through six months of competition this past season:

• Big air and Snowboard Park & Pipe overall crystal globes winner

• Bakuriani 2023 World Championships halfpipe silver

• First rider ever to podium in big air, slopestyle and halfpipe World Cup in one season

• First rider to finish top three overall in big air, slopestyle and halfpipe World Cup in one season

• Most Park & Pipe World Cup points in a single season

• Most Park & Pipe World Cup starts in one season

It's a dizzying list, as Val collected a set of highlights in one short season the likes of which most riders will be lucky to achieve even one of in their entire careers.

However, if you were around Valentino Guseli day-in and day-out over the course of the 2022/23 season, what you might really remember were the little moments, where the things that make him so special as a both a snowboarder and human being stood out. Images of him dropping in for the first test run on the Edmonton Style Experience big air jump without knowing the speed, taking one of the hardest knuckle hits you're likley to witness, only to pick himself up and jog straight back up the stairs to the top of the stadium for his next run.

And then jogging up those stairs again and again and again over the course of the week, squeezing more hits out of his training sessions than any other rider, and eventually going on to claim his first career World Cup win when the curtain finally came down on the event.

Then there were the hours spent hanging around the finish area, signing autographs and posing for photos with any and everyone who approached him. And the time he would take out of his day to thank course workers and volunteers for their efforts whenever he got the chance. And the way he would take disappointing results as learning experiences and come back harder the next event, or the way he would accept his successes humbly, knowing his end goal is bigger than any single podium on any given comp day.

Speaking of humble, when we first rang Val for this interview he was just wrapping up a day helping his dad with the family business, building concrete pools around Melbourne. The cell service was spotty from car ride home out  in the "Australian wilderness," as Val himself described it, and our call got cut off a few times.

Later in the day we were able to reach the busiest man in snowboarding on a solid connection at home, where we talked Olympic-sized goals, coming back from two nearly-broken ankles to win World Champs silver, and why everyone should ride halfpipe, big air and slope - even if it makes Val's reign as the world's best all-terrain destroyer more difficult.

FIS - So where did we leave off last time? I think I was asking you about what it's been like running the interview circuit, and what people have been interested in hearing about in regard to your season?

Valentino Guseli - Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot of questions about whether those records and things were my goals, and my answer is always that it is one of my goals to try to show that it's possible to be competitive in all disciplines of snowboarding. I think all of my favorite snowboarders are really great at riding every kind of condition and terrain, so that that's a big one. Then, like, I get asked about what I do to settle back in at home after a really long, super busy season. And then also what my current goals are.

Right. Because I was gonna say, when I was thinking about questions to ask you, I've talked to you enough over this season that while I know that while you're stoked to rack up the trophies and accomplishments that you did this season, you also don't really like dwelling on it all too much. It kind of feels like you've got this vibe where you're like, ‘Yeah, that was sick, but I'm still just getting started with this.’ Would you kind of agree with that?

Yeah, for sure. I've been watching the new Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary over and over again. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but it's pretty sick.

I did watch it, and it is actually super interesting.

Yeah, there's a thing, like, something he said, where he quoted the guy that first went up Mount Everest. What's his name?

Edmond Hillary, I think.

Right, and he was asked about when he got to the top of Mount Everest, how it felt. And he said, ‘As soon as I got to the top, I saw another peak,’ which was Makalu, and then he started planning his route to that pretty much right away. So, it's kind of like, once you get to one goal, the next ones start to look even more tempting.

Right. You’re saying that there's more for you to achieve than just one incredible season.

Yeah. I want to win the Olympics in every discipline. I want to inspire millions to shred and just be better.

Dude...those are huge words to say, but seeing what you've done this past season, I'm like, ‘Hell yeah, get it, Val...’

They're big goals for sure, but what's the point of having small goals? I might as well have the biggest goals possible and then even falling short isn't as bad. Like if you shoot for the moon and miss, you land on a star. Haha.

For sure. I want to rewind it a bit now though. One thing I wanted to talk about, and I say this with the utmost respect, but, when I first heard about you and we saw you do that record-setting halfpipe air at Laax, my attitude was kind of like, ‘Alright, cool stunt, but like what else you got?’ I've seen a lot of kids come up and have a lot of hype and then kind of flame out in one way another. But you not only didn't do that, you came out of it and became the world's best all-around competition snowboarder.

Did you find negotiating that period - getting from that fame for being a young, one-trick-pony kind of rider, to where you are now - to be a struggle?

There was so much struggle, man. I actually do feel like I went through that period where you shine for a bit and then you just don't do much.

After my first Laax Open where I qualified first, pretty much from there it felt like...I don’t think I was externally cocky, but internally I thought, ‘Damn, I'm actually like, really good.’ But then I didn't really do much for the next little while. I didn’t get the results I was expecting. And then I was like, ‘Ohh wait, there's much, more work to be done, and I'm actually not as good as I thought I was.’

So that was tough. The 2020/21 season I had a lot of struggles. There were some pretty painful situations that I was in, like missing Aspen World Champs finals by one spot after qualifying first at the competition before in Laax. That was a pretty tough wakeup call.

But it's good. It's what I needed. And then from there I kinda kept pushing and...sorry, my dad's calling me. I gotta message him and tell him that I'm trying to talk to you.

If you want to just answer real quick, that's cool.

No, no, all good, all good. So yeah, I I definitely felt like I went through that time where I was doing well, and then I wasn't. And I had to kind of find a way to bring it back and make it a consistent thing to do well.

I had to work my way back up in the halfpipe. The first year, 2020/21, the best result I got at pipe comp was 8th, and that was at Laax Open, my first World Cup. And then at the next World Cup I got 29th.

Through 2021/22 and the start of last season I was making all the finals and getting like 5th and 6th, but didn't quite get to the podium. And then halfway through this year, I finally started hitting the podium in some pipe comps.

I think some people see it as a disadvantage doing the amount of riding I do, doing every competition, but I think it's an advantage in lots of ways. It keeps you fresh, because once you're sick of halfpipe, you jump back over to slope. And once you're sick of slope, you get to go back in the pipe. So it's kind of a really nice balance and mix which helps me stay super stoked towards snowboarding and really enjoying it the whole time.

I think that's a big thing. As I started getting those podiums I had to learn that if I'm enjoying myself, good stuff just happens. I think the first year and a little bit of competing I was super serious and didn't really enjoy every moment. But that’s something that I've learned to do now and that's helped a lot.

Do you think that the seriousness you brought to the table, having those really early expectations and frustrations as a 15-year-old, and then finding your feet and finally getting the results with a different attitude, do you think that helps you bring that joy to your riding now?

100% yeah.

Your first podiums actually came in slope and then big air, and then you finally got a World Cup halfpipe top-3 last of the bunch. Not that slope or big air are easy in any way, but do you think that that kind of speaks to just how insanely difficult it is to put together a podium pipe run these days?

Oh dude, I don't think many people understand - especially people that rarely ride pipe. In halfpipe you basically have to be within the top six in the world to potentially podium. There's this zone where all the top guys have all the biggest tricks, and if you don't have those tricks it's really hard to get up in there.

You really have to have those big tricks to be up with those guys, but then, once you get them, you're in a pretty sweet place. I feel like halfpipe’s the kind of discipline where it's much easier to be consistent than slopestyle and big air. Because I think everyone has similar tricks in slope and big air, it just depends on whose day it is.

But then in halfpipe like...in Mammoth and Calgary, I felt like sh*t when I was doing finals in halfpipe. Like, I felt terrible, but then I was still able to land my stuff, just because the halfpipe is a bit more of a consistent venue or discipline.

So you could sort of tap into the muscle memory more than in a slope run, say?

Exactly, yeah.

Jumping off from that, I wanted to talk about your Bakuriani 2023 World Champs run, because I feel like that didn't get enough recognition for what you were able to accomplish there. I think of everything that you did this past season, that to me is the most impressive - coming off a gnarly injury just a few days earlier in slopestyle training, and then landing I think the best run of your life in World Champs finals for silver, .5 points off of gold.

100% best run of my life.

It's still hard for me to process how crazy that is, so I wanted to hear you talk about it how that all went down.

Honestly, that day and that week beforehand...I'm really, really proud of myself and the way that I was able to navigate a very difficult situation there.

So yeah, I hurt my ankles in slope training, coming up 90 in a landing and just jacking them both. I did think they were broken at the time, but I was really lucky that they weren't.

And then I just spent the next - I don't know how many days it was until I had to compete in pipe - but I just spent as much time as I could like mentally and physically recovering. I was basically trying to use my brain to make my ankles heal.

I'd like lay on the couch with ice on my ankles and try to send healing vibes to my ankles when I wasn't swimming or trying to do exercises to make them feel better. I put a lot of physical and mental effort into feeling good.

And then I went to practice. There were three practice days, so I went to the first practice and did maybe four runs, barely getting out of the pipe. Then the next day I opted for little bit more and did some threes and fives, and then the next day I did like maybe one double. And then I knew that I was gonna have to just send it to even make finals, so on quali day I just told myself, ‘Who cares about the pain? It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything.’ And I just did the riding that I knew I could, and I was stoked to have landed that run. Even that quali run was one of the best runs that I've done at the time in competition.

And then, yeah, final day comes around and basically I'm just telling myself, ‘I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win today.’ I wasn't seeing any other possible outcome other than winning. And I know I didn't win, which was a shame...

Yeah, half a point...

Yeah. It was a shame not winning, but I had just told myself that no matter what happens, I'm gonna make this happen. I wanted it so bad, and I knew that the run that I was gonna do was pretty well-planned. And then finals day comes, training’s going good, I did the I did the cab triple...well, I call them triples, but I’m not sure everyone agrees with me.

I was going to ask you about that specific trick separately, actually...

Yeah, I mean, maybe it needs some work. So yeah, I'll just call it a cab 14 for now.

So, I did the cab 14 in practice, and I landed it. And then I was getting pretty stoked because my ankles weren't hurting me too bad, and I had just done a run in practice that I was pretty sure was capable of first place.

So, in a few days I went from not even thinking that I was able to compete, to being able to do my best-ever run in that pipe on that day. It felt pretty good.

Then into finals and there was the first run which I kind of blew it on. I got over-amped and I messed it up pretty bad, and that kind of brought me back down to Earth and to reality. And then I was just like, ‘Alright, next one, I know what I have to do, I'm going to land it, no matter what.’

I landed that next run and I thought it was probably good enough for top three, but I went into fifth and I wasn't super happy about that, to be sitting in fifth with one more run to go. But all I could do to change that was to just do a better run in the next one, and so I just mentally prepared for that.

There are certain moments where you're put in a situation where you have to perform and it does something to you. I dropped in for that third run and then next thing I knew, I was at the bottom after landing and I was stoked. It just kind of all happened. It felt like I was in flow state. I just got to the bottom and my run was done and it was the best run I'd ever done. It was a pretty cool moment.

Yeah, it was. I was there for the whole thing and I felt like I was going through that whole saga with you. Seeing your face after the scores came in on second run and just being like, “Wow, ok, what more does Val have left in the tank here?”

Yeah, but I kind of got over that pretty quickly, because I had to. And then I just put all my energy into my next run. And it all worked out. Well, almost.

I think the .5 that kept you off top spot was just straight up the judges being like, “We needed like two more degrees of cork on that triple,” or something. Although don’t get me wrong, Chaeun’s (Lee) run was insane, too, and well-deserving of gold. It was so close. But you know what I mean about the axis, right?

Yeah, I guess I just needed to be a little bit more flipped. A tiny bit more.

We just posted a triple from Yuto Totsuka on the FIS channel, frontside triple 14 I think, and it's like yours with a flatter axis on the on the third cork, but that one of his was maybe just a bit more corked than yours. But still, like I said, I think that that was your standout moment of the year for me because that was just blood and guts and glory.

Yeah. Thank you.

Let's maybe hop back to the Olympics for a bit. You've talked about your hopes and goals for the Games - three medals, three golds even - but do you ever think about how many pieces have to come together just to get one medal? And then think about all the guys we've seen, huge names, whether it's Marcus Kleveland or whatever, guys who have not been able to hop on an Olympic podium?

Soooo many things have to come together. It's a crazy amount, but I the way I see it is like - and this is I think the only way you can actually make it happen - but it’s just to believe in myself to put the amount of work in that it requires. I have a while until the next Olympics and I think I can do a lot of evolving mentally, physically and in my sport to put myself in the best position to handle any situation and come out on top. It's a big goal. It's a huge goal, but all I can do is back myself and shoot for it. And to be honest with myself. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

You're in a prime position to do something special, for sure. I'm stoked to be around and be along for the ride.

Thanks bro.

So I'm calling these interviews the “Crystal Globe series,” so I should probably talk about that. How funny or interesting or cool or whatever is it that your first globe was in big air, which is the one event where I don't think many people would have predicted you to be a globe winner?

Ha, no, probably not. It was my first year doing big air World Cups. I'd never done a big air World Cup before this season. So yeah, it was pretty weird and pretty funny. And it definitely felt good. I remember when it came down to it at Kreischberg, how the ways I was feeling was unlike anything I've ever felt.

I had to just end up in front of Chris (Corning) to win it and I remember thinking about how devastated and bad I'd feel if I didn’t get the job done. But the way that that night turned out, everything worked and I won the globe and I got to do it with my dad there with me. That was the best. It was really amazing.

Yeah, I remember talking to you in the finish in Edmonton earlier in the season when you were sitting in first, on the cusp of your first World Cup victory, and you being like, “Dude, Chris is behind me, I’m not celebrating anything yet.” Having Corning on your heels has got to be a bit...

Terrifying. It’s so scary. He's like Terminator. You kidding?

Ha! That's awesome. And, of course, you won the overall globe, as well. If you keep doing what you’re doing and entering every comp over the next few seasons we’re going to have to rename it the Guseli Globe, because I don't see many people challenging you for that. Although, actually this is interesting, because Chaeun is an all-rounder too, isn’t he?

He is so good at slopestyle and big air. He's amazing...so sick. And he's always been like that. But think the reason why he's not competing in everything is that his association won't let him.

But he’s so good at everything, and I think if they let him ride slope and big air it'll be pretty cool to see the way that snowboarding has gone from people that stick to one or maybe two disciplines to it becoming more popular to do everything, which is one of the things that I've I've been wanting to achieve. I’m trying to prove that it's possible and inspire more people to do it.

Also, it could make your life a little bit harder, but I think having that kind of competition and rivalry is also really good for the sport. Having those storylines, if Chaeun could hop in and start pushing you across all three events, that would be amazing for the sport, you know?

It's perfect. And even though it's gonna make it harder for me, sport is about pushing ourselves to a point that we didn't know was possible. That's what competition is for. And like, yeah, you can win and winning is good, but how I see it is that we're all getting better together. Pushing each other is good, too.

100%. That's what so much of snowboarding is all about - progressing and getting better, whether it's homies on their local little jump pushing each other to the next 180, or at the very upper echelons where you guys are at, pushing the limits of what's possible on the board.

100%. And also Taiga (Hasegawa) is really good at half pipe. I've been watching his Instagram and he's posted some stuff, back-to-back double 10s stuff. Some pretty sick, hard stuff.

Oh, and Su Yiming, too. He’s been posting some stuff from the pipe on his IG.

Yeah, we gotta show the next generation coming up that you can do it.

Alright, last couple questions. So we've got no Olympics and no World Champs coming up next season, so what are you looking forward to? (You're allowed to say X Games...)

So yeah, I am looking forward to X Games and hopefully upping the third place from last season to a couple firsts, if they invite me for more than one event. And then I'll be doing some of the World Cups, for sure. And honestly, I'm just looking forward to being on the tour again and shredding with the homies, working on my riding and just enjoying it like I enjoyed it so much this past season. I'm missing it already, so I can't wait to get back to it. And I'm definitely excited to go and watch Scooter at the Big Air Chur. Dude, that’s so crazy that Scooter is gonna be there.

I just looked them up today because I was writing the story previewing the music for Big Air Chur and I was like, damn, these guys are hilarious.

So sick.

And then last thing, do you want to give shouts out to anybody - Mikey, the crew or anyone like that?

I'll say huge shout out to you, Chad.

Hey, thanks, buddy.

The best homie.

I appreciate that, man.

Then we'll go mom and dad. I'm so appreciative for everything that I've done for me. My dad spent so much time with me when I was really, really young, up until now, helping me chase my dreams and I'm I'm so grateful for him and my mom. I'd also like to say a big thanks to Mikey Williams, Benny Bright, Tom Pelley, Mike Lund, Georges Dione…there's so many, man.

Those guys all had a huge influence on my snowboarding and have helped me a lot, and I I'm really grateful for them. Oh, Robin, Robin Gaentzhirt...I don't know if you've met him. He's a French homie, he taught me how to race.

Oh no way.

Like, boardercross type stuff. Yeah, he told me how to how to go fast, how to ride right, in between the features. There’s the tricks in the air and the acrobatic stuff, but snowboarding is the action of riding a piece of wood down the hill, and the more comfortable you can feel with that, the better you're going to go. So, he was massive, huge thanks to him.

And then of course Red Bull, Oakley, Volcom, Boost Mobile, Rhythm Snowboard Shop. Yeah, I think I think we're pretty sweet there.

Boom, that's the ender. Thank you, man. I really appreciate the time.

You too. Thank you.