Arianna at Scufoneda, a traditional Italian telemark festival in 2000. The stick is part of the original telemark style in the Italian alpine. Photo: Tricomi Family Archive Arianna’s competitive career started between the gates. Here she is rac-ing in Alta Badia, Italy in 2000. Photo: Tricomi Family Archive “I OWE EVERYTHING TO MY MOM,” Tricomi says. “She was who I looked up to most growing up, and she’s still a mega-big inspiration for me. I don’t know anyone else that loves skiing as much as her.” Tricomi’s mother, Maria Cristina Gravina, competed for the Italian National Team in downhill for over a decade and skied in the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. Instead of slowing down following her racing career, she dedicated her-self to skydiving for the next 20 years. But skiing remains her true love. Today she instructs and guides skiing in the winters and hiking in the summers. And, though her skydiving days are behind her, she helps run the paragliding and skydiving center near her home in Alta Badia. When Gravina took my call, she asked to call me back in five minutes. A rescue helicopter was landing outside and she needed to check that the paragliders and helicopter were coordinating use of the shared airspace. She called back as promised, and just as Tricomi described, her love for skiing was apparent. From her own alpine resume, to pride in her daughter’s accomplish-ments, she exuded a rapturous, borderline-religious enthusiasm for sliding downhill in all its forms. “I would take [Arianna] with me anywhere she wanted to go,” Gravina says. “I found tele gear for her when she was 6 so we could go off-piste together. She went diving in the Maldives when she was 8. She started surfing when she saw locals riding waves on the Mediterranean Sea when we were on a sailing trip. She would see me going up in the plane and returning to land in a different place with my parachute. So my poor kid,” she laughs, “did a tandem skydive with me when she was 8.” “It was [my mom] who showed me the pow, and I guess I just fell in love deeply, not knowing it would become my life one day,” Tricomi says. “I used to skip training on powder days and my mom would be pissed. But I was like, ‘Mom, you showed me this!’” In addition to her mom’s athletic pedigree, Tricomi’s father was a pilot in the Italian Air Force. Though separated from Gravina and not much involved in Tricomi’s childhood, both Arianna and her mom see his calm, focused demeanor mani-fested in Tricomi’s approach to big mountains and competition. Despite a knack for athletic endeavors and an inde-fatigable curious streak, for Tricomi, it has always been skiing first. When she went to study abroad in New Zealand for her final year of high school, she got caught skipping school with increasing frequency. The terrain park at Cardrona was too convenient and close, and far too fun for her classes to stand a chance. Though she did finish her missed classes when she got home. She didn’t stay in the terrain park for long, entering her first Freeride World Qualifier event in 2013. By 2015, she won the qualifying series and secured a spot on the Freeride World Tour. As a FWT rookie in 2016, she provided an immediate infu-sion of energy and style, winning the event in Fieberbrunn, Austria, and placing third overall. In 2017, she finished third again, securing tour wins in Arcalís, Andorra, and Haines, AK. A year later, she pieced together a dominant FWT sea-son, winning the 2018 overall crown with victories in Arcalís; Hakuba, Japan; and Verbier, Switzerland. She would go on to defend that title for the next two years—the first and only skier to earn a threepeat in the competition. Yet it was her 2018 performance that signaled a turning point not just for Tricomi’s career, but arguably for women’s competitive freeriding as a whole. “I’ve definitely been inspired by Arianna’s skiing,” FWT over-all champion Elisabeth Gerritzen says. “She helped create the blueprint for a lot of what’s going on in women’s freeride today. The 360 she did in Arcalís in 2018 felt like a mini earthquake. It was a turning point for me personally because it was like, ‘OK, I can either quit now, or I can push myself to keep up.’” Arianna Tricomi 043
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 3: Page 43
