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PowderPeople | Manuela Mandl

An interview on competitive freeriding with one of the most experienced women in the business.

by Timo Macvan • 01/27/2024
Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl
Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl
Last spring, the best men and women of the competitive freeride scene met in Fieberbrunn to find out who had what it takes to stand at the top of the Freeride World Tour podium two weeks later. I was also able to be part of the action, not as an athlete of course, but as a reporter who was able to provide insights into the tour and the supporting events. As part of this, I had the pleasure of conducting an interview about our favourite activity with local heroine Manuela Mandl. In 2018, she became freeride world champion in snowboarding and last year she secured victory in Xtreme Verbier, taking third place in the FWT.

Timo: Freeriding is a big part of your life, you've been in the scene for a long time and are also a competitive rider. What does it feel like to go freeriding? How does it feel when you're out and about in open terrain?

Manu: When I'm really on the mountain in great conditions and I don't have to concentrate on a job, then I'm completely in the moment and it's a complete fulfilment. If I can then "send" something that is so thrilling at the limit and you don't know exactly whether it will work, but in the end it does, then that's just great. I just love playing with these boundaries.

There are days when the conditions are right and you can push. I completely forget the time because I live in these moments.

 

Timo: What role does mental health play in your freeriding cosmos? How do you use the whole topic for yourself on the mountain? You have also produced a film on the subject.

Manu: For me, being outside and being able to move is extremely important for my mental health. And for me as an athlete and in the bubble in which I move, it's a big issue. I had a concussion as a result of a fall, which resulted in short term memory loss. What affected me in the long term, however, was acute depression for a while. Once your head has been completely shaken, the question arises as to how you sort yourself out again as a person and where the anchor points are that give you confidence again.

The film you mention (Through Darkness) is about exactly this topic. After my fall, I wasn't sure whether I could still snowboard properly at all. In this film project, I tried to find out. Being blind in the dark meant I had to rely more on my instincts and muscle memory, and that worked incredibly well. When you take your sight out, your thinking immediately stops and your body intuitively takes over. You are so focussed because on the one hand you are overwhelmed by the loss of sight, but on the other hand you are underchallenged because a lot of capacity in the brain doesn't need to be used. And that was super interesting and very important for me.

Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl
Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl

Timo: How exactly can the film be placed in time? Was it the answer to the aforementioned fall and the resulting difficult time?

Manu: Yes exactly, I spun it pretty much right after that. The fall was after the world championship title in 2018, due to a stupid misjudgement after a drop, where the back of my head hit the rocks first. We then shot the film in Norway in the autumn of the same year and released it in 2019. In the process, I learnt that concussions to the back of the head are probably a bit more severe than some others. Of course, I'm aware that such accidents can happen in our sport. But nevertheless, following the fall, we had the idea of producing a film about this side of the sport as well. The idea was to provide inspiration for coping strategies in situations that are difficult but cannot be changed. The location of Norway was also a great metaphor, because it's simply dark in the polar night and you can't change that. It's a bit like the weather. It's all about what you make of it. Of course the winter of last year (22/23) wasn't really good, but you can't change it.

 

Timo: You mentioned earlier that you like to come across as easy-going, but that this also stresses you out to some extent. Is that also the case in sport, especially in competitions? Does that affect you and does it make you behave differently in certain situations?

Manu: Of course there is a difference when I turn up somewhere as an athlete. But of course I'm much more than just an athlete. I'm an architect, I'm interested in politics and there are certainly other things that I'm still learning and that I'm not so good at yet. But when I'm out and about as an athlete, it's part of my job to prioritise the positive aspects of sport and put my other needs on the back burner. Sometimes that simply means not telling people what it costs to be here right now. That you can't always see your family at important events, for example, because you have a very irregular lifestyle over the winter. Other people certainly have these things because of their job, but in sport it often goes unnoticed because it's not so much in the foreground. Another example is the training that we do all year round. One example is that there is often a lack of understanding if you don't come for a coffee because you haven't stretched yet. The ever-increasing professionalisation also means more work. More and more structured training is required, which now starts as early as childhood. That's why freeriding is increasingly becoming a full-time job.

Mia Maria Knoll
Fieberbrunn
Manuela Mandl
Mia Maria Knoll
Fieberbrunn
Manuela Mandl

Timo: You have already indicated that safety on the mountain is also very important to you. What does your general preparation look like?

Manu: I minimise risk to the best of my knowledge and belief. But of course I also realise that you can simply be unlucky. Especially recently, I've had a lot of people from my immediate environment who haven't come back from the mountain. It makes you wonder whether it's worth it to ride this line right now. I always try to use my subjective impressions to make a very simple risk assessment. I try to assess whether it will only hurt, whether I could end up in hospital or perhaps even die. My golden rule is that if I simply can't fully assess all the factors, then I just don't do it. I recently had a relevant experience where Xaver de la Rue and Jeremy Jones told the Juniors that they should never ride over off-road traps. No matter how cool it looks over there, they just don't ride over it. So by choosing the track, the terrain and the hill, you can avoid a lot of risk.

 

Timo: Your answers made me think of another question off the top of my head, and that is that you talked about being a role model as an athlete and also that people often only focus on the sunny times. Wouldn't it also be exemplary to show people what it's really like?

Manu: That's exactly what I always try to show. One of my last reels was an Instagram vs. reality, where I have a mega cool GoPro recording and on the video from below you can hear how icy it was and see how little beautiful I went down there. Basically, this is a very exciting question, because the social media construct demands that private life is shown. But I also have to make it clear that I draw my boundaries very strictly. I don't want to undress myself emotionally in public and be kept on the internet forever and ever. It would probably be very inspiring for some people and it would also sell better. For example, when I get upset about gender inequality in sport on the way up in the lift. There's probably already a lot of media science knowledge behind it, but I'm my own curator of my social media and I always ask myself whether I want to do that. The answer is often "no" and that's why I don't do it. Even if I decide to show something in this way, it's not real life. It's still a conscious decision to show a snippet of my life.

Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl
Richard Buchner
Manuela Mandl

This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

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