It’s a quite day for snowboarding videos, so we thought we’d delve back into the archives to bring you this stone-cold classic part.
In 2000 Gigi Rüf got a part in Kingpin’s Destroyer that grabbed the attention of the snowboarding world. In the years after that breakthrough moment, he started to cement himself as one of the world’s most stylish and talented riders. We can’t really think of a time when watching a Gigi part hasn’t been awesome, and his 2005 segment in Absinthe’s Futureproof is potentially our favourite.
In a all natural affair, Gigi shuts down everything from steep chutes to mellow wind lips (they look mellow until he chucks huge spins of them). It’s this eye for finding natural features that seems to have taken him to that jedi level of über shtyleee riding.
His peers think the same as well. Romain deMarchi says that Gigi is, “by far the most creative snowboarder I have ever seen.” Coming from another big gun like Romain, that’s saying something, I mean he’s no slouch himself. Just look at his part in Pop where he does a 100ft+ cab 720 off the toes at Chad’s gap. It’s unreal. (skip to 54 seconds to see it here).
In the last couple of years Gigi has carried on his trend of being a complete boss. Winning the Red Bull Ultra Natural (see the winning run below), launching his own board company Slash by Gigi and all while filming another winner segment for Resonance. What’s potentially even cooler is that (as our interview with him revealed) despite all the fame and success, he comes across as humble guy who is just genuinely grateful to be snowboarding.
