- Location
- Ontario, Canada
So I was just browsing through the old videos, I noticed quite a few are no longer posted online. A couple at least of the Blowsion Surf Slam videos are down now, then I went over to Vimeo and reflecting on how excited I was in anticipation for the Obscurity & Divinity movie to be made...never happened sadly...but I saw one of my original inspirations to the sport, Ross Champion. I really liked how most of his aerials were so clean and smooth. It got me wondering what he's up to nowadays. I checked out his fb page, his last post was about 36 weeks ago, which was also his first in about 5 years. He said he probably won't be paying any more attention to his fb page and that his ski life is totally done...kind of sad to hear being that he was such an inspiration to so many, myself included. Most of these guys brought the sport to where it is today.
Ross didn't say much of what he is doing now other than something to do with computer modeling of some sort, I'm not sure if his watch business is still "a" business but he has fully moved on from his ski life. I didn't even see him comment once on riding just purely for the pleasure of it, it sounds like he has fully dropped the ski life. I'm just wondering who else has moved on from the pros and left the sport entirely? Unfortunately Joe Kenny had his ski life stolen from him, but Ross said Joe is doing well and quite happy. What big names in the sport do you guys remember but haven't seen or know of totally moving on? I can remember some names if I really tried to, that I haven't heard much about in some time, one in particular that comes to mind though is Jimmy Visser, what's he doing these days? Sometimes when I see these guys in my age range moving on it makes me wonder if I should consider the same thing to preserve what little life I have left in my knees, ankles and back. I'm in my early 40's and have both knees going on me, neck discs are crunching all the time and giving me migraines, lower back freaks out every now and then, sore ankles most of the time after a ride and blown out my right calf muscle twice within 2 months...but then I get out there, catch a few nice altitudes and just can't give it up lol. It makes me wonder what the driving force was for these retired pros to become retired and where and what are they doing now?
Ross didn't say much of what he is doing now other than something to do with computer modeling of some sort, I'm not sure if his watch business is still "a" business but he has fully moved on from his ski life. I didn't even see him comment once on riding just purely for the pleasure of it, it sounds like he has fully dropped the ski life. I'm just wondering who else has moved on from the pros and left the sport entirely? Unfortunately Joe Kenny had his ski life stolen from him, but Ross said Joe is doing well and quite happy. What big names in the sport do you guys remember but haven't seen or know of totally moving on? I can remember some names if I really tried to, that I haven't heard much about in some time, one in particular that comes to mind though is Jimmy Visser, what's he doing these days? Sometimes when I see these guys in my age range moving on it makes me wonder if I should consider the same thing to preserve what little life I have left in my knees, ankles and back. I'm in my early 40's and have both knees going on me, neck discs are crunching all the time and giving me migraines, lower back freaks out every now and then, sore ankles most of the time after a ride and blown out my right calf muscle twice within 2 months...but then I get out there, catch a few nice altitudes and just can't give it up lol. It makes me wonder what the driving force was for these retired pros to become retired and where and what are they doing now?
But that was also when the aftermarket parts industry was really plentiful. You would see sponsor names like TDR, Team Butch, Jetsport, Westcoast...I wonder what all of these guys that made the parts are doing now. Man it sucks to see so many companies and big names fall off. I could only imagine where the industry would be now if these guys still had a hand in it.
