Lucy Lieberherr Interview

British Ski & Board Show, 31st October 2009, Birmingham NEC

Chantelle, Abz and I were very lucky to visit this year’s excellent Ski & Board Show at Birmingham’s NEC, featuring the impressive talents of the Big Air Freestyle display team, sponsored by Italy’s Aosta Valley. As ever, the likes of Olympic legend Ales Valenta performed some impressive work, but the aerial skills of Lucy Lieberherr caught our attention.

We caught up with Lucy to see how she got into snowboarding, and whether it’s a male dominated sport.

 Hi Lucy, if we could start off with, how did you get started in Snowboarding?

My Godfather gave me a Snowboard as a present on my 9^th birthday, and so my parents who didn’t really want to buy me skis, were happy and encouraged me to board instead.

 How long did it take you before you felt comfortable entering serious competitions?

Well at first I started out on hard boots, and asymmetric boards on holidays. 2 weeks a year, but when I was about 18 I started jumping, freestyle snowboarding, for about a year, not very long because I used to aerials before for about 3 years. So I was already used to doing back flips and stuff.

 Do you Ski as well?

Not anymore, I don’t really like skiing, but I’m not very good at it!

 What is it about Snowboarding that you prefer over Skiing?

I think it’s like a calmer movement, and it feels more like surfing, I’m a surfer as well. I think you can have fun on the skis, but especially with jumping, snowboarding is more difficult because you just have one edge, not two, so for me that was a challenge after aerials, to do this with the snowboard. But not the acrobatic stuff!

 Abbie, one of our editors on the Jitty, is also into Snowboarding, but some of the injuries she’s had have been pretty bad, how about yourself?

Once I broke a cross ligament, well it wasn’t broken as such it was more like it was torn. It didn’t need an operation but it took me around half a year to recover, and that was horrible. It was the middle of the winter and I couldn’t go Snowboarding, and I didn’t really know what else I could do with myself on weekends because everybody else was out on the slopes. That was my main injury. Then I had my Sternum broken, by doing a back flip and landing on my back, which was stupid because I couldn’t do many things afterwards, but it didn’t hurt that much, so not that bad.

 So what about the highlights so far?

Well, my highlights are just the perfect powder days with my friends in the mountains. I like to do competitions, yes, I like the crowds, and everything that goes with that, but my highlight is just snowboarding, enjoying it, seeing the Alps, or the scenery wherever I am at the time.

 What do you do for spare time, to maybe calm down / relax after competitions and on days off?

More snowboarding! No, I do more, different sports as well. I dance a little, and I used to do power Yoga, although I wasn’t great at doing that, and of course, I surf too.

 Sometimes Snowboarding is viewed as a masculine sport, would you agree with that?

Well, it was, but it’s gotten better because a lot of women orientated magazines for the sport are out, and we’ve just got our first Swiss female magazine, so that’s a good thing for us girls to get some coverage!

 Is there a danger women aren’t taken seriously?

No. You’re taken seriously so long as you want to Snowboard, and you want to improve yourself. You’re just not taken seriously if you’re just one of those pretty looking girls that just stands by the slopes.

 Do you have any advice for those who may want to take up Snowboarding?

Well, just don’t give up doing it, and have fun. Don’t try to go too far, pick it up slowly step by step, and enjoy yourself!

Thank you for your time.

 We’d like to thank the charming Lucy for her time, and also Andrea from Poppyseed for arranging the interview in her onsite office!

 Lucy is sponsored by: West Beach, Nitro, Spy