Fredi Kalbermatten: the small-town Saas Fee village boy who became life-long buddies with Nicolas Müller as a boy, and along with Nico, got picked up by Burton in their early days where they pushed each others riding to amazing new heights. After both were promoted to the Burton global team, Fredi began filming with Standard, mainly in North America, while Nico stayed in Laax to film with Absinthe, and although their paths crossed less frequently after that point, they remained friends and their riding styles still share many similarities.

Even though all of his buddies seem to think he’s ‘slow’, there’s clearly a lot of love out there for Fredi and his powerful, stomping riding riding style, which has always spoken for itself. Fredi is another rider who is clearly massively underrated on a mainstream level but should in many ways be regarded as on par with the Gigis, Nicos and De Marchis.

Plus, there can’t be many people out there that would have the cheek to tell Terje Haakonsen he must shovel…