STRAIGHT LINE A LONG CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY From Iron Mines to the Olympics with Per Spett Spett has long frequented Riksgränsen, a few hours’ drive or train ride from Kiruna. The resort is famous for its playful terrain and features, a perfect place for Spett to demonstrate his airtime-oriented mogul skills. Photo: Daniel Rönnbäck Words Sakeus Bankson f 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 luxuri-ously 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 I 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—11 th , 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. The Ski Journal 031
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Four: Page 31
