Words: Sakeus Bankson 2018-01-17 18:36:23
If you’re looking for three-time Olympic mogul skier Per Spett, your best bet is to head to Sweden’s northernmost town of Kiruna, and look down. Way down, into an iron mine mroe than a mile deep. There, Spett will be working in one of the subterranean tunnels.
“It’s dark almost all of December,” Spett says. “We are underground loading trains and doing other tasks, so even if it is sunny for a few hours, we’re not going to see it.”
But when he emerges, you’ll most likely find the luxuriously bearded skier, miner and musician where he’s spent much of his aboveground life: in the mountains, be it the European Alps, nearby Riksgränsen resort, the icy hills of Finland, or the tiny ski area of Luossa where he learned to ski.
The 20,000-person town of Kiruna seems an unlikely place to produce a world-class athlete. But the 32-year-old Spett has been skiing on the local hill since he was a toddler; a hill that also happened to be home to a former Europa Cup mogul coach. When moguls boomed in the 1990s, the preteen Spett took to the discipline immediately, and at 15 years old he enrolled in the freestyle ski academy in Järpen. By 2003, he was competing in his first FIS World Cup event in Ruka, Finland.
In the years since, Spett has competed in dozens of World Cup and Europa Cup events around the world. He won the 2010 Swedish Nation Championships, and has skied in three Winter Olympics: 2006 in Torino, Italy; 2010 in Vancouver, BC; and 2014 in Sochi, Russia. He notched his best Olympic finish at Sochi—11th, with a massive Superman front flip that delighted his Swedish fans.
To support his skiing, in 2011 Spett got a job operating heavy machinery for the Swedish LKAB company, owner of Kiruna’s iron mine and one of his longtime sponsors. The position offered some financial freedom, as well as a more existential benefit: context.
“That job helped me think differently about the sport,” he says. “When I had to focus my energy outside of skiing to succeed, it helped me be a better skier as well. You find new ways of thinking, new ways of pushing yourself, and get a different perspective.”
Spett hasn’t competed outside of Sweden for two years, and the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea will be the first he hasn’t attended in more than a decade. It’s a decision that comes with mixed feelings.
“You have to put aside so many other things to be able to compete on that level,” he says. “Of course, you still want to perform and do the thing you love. But everything ends.”
Still, Spett’s time on the mogul circuit provided valuable insight and appreciation for everything he’s experienced along the way.
“I’ve connected with such a wide variety of people and environments,” Spett says. “When you can appreciate the good bits from every place, they all become amazing.”
That includes Kiruna, and Spett would like to spend more time exploring the surrounding mountains. He’d also like to return to Europe, as well as repeat the 2015 motorcycle trip he and his cousin took across the western United States. Until then, Spett will continue his subterranean work. For much of the world, months of darkness may seem a steep price to keep skiing. But for the Kiruna native, its just home.
“I’m born and raised here, so it’s not a big issue,” Spett says. “That’s usually the time of year the snow is falling, and the city is all lit up, and that gives the whole thing a positive vibe. To me, it’s like a really long Christmas holiday.”
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