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If there’s one thing that professional freeskier Anna Segal is always game for, it’s adventure.
Anna Segal: I got the call to join WME three weeks before [the segment was set to shoot]. K2 sent me a message asking me if I was free in May. Even though I had a full-time job at the time, I said yes. I wanted to hear what the opportunity was first, then figure things out from there. When K2 asked if I wanted to go to Iceland with WME, I thought, oh my gosh, you can’t ask for a better text message! I immediately said yes. Iceland has always been on my radar, I just never expected I would have the opportunity to ski there. Of course, a huge part of it was getting the chance to film with WME.
It’s funny, in Australia when I tell people I’m a professional skier, they go on and say, ‘Oh, you compete in the Olympics?’ I tell them I used to do that, but now I shoot videos and photos. And they say, ‘Oh, with Warren Miller?’ Everyone knows Warren Miller movies. I used to have to tell them no, I’ve never filmed with WME before, but hopefully someday. Now it’s pretty cool to say, ‘Yeah, I film with Warren Miller!’ That’s the pinnacle.
When I was 19 I decided I wanted to give freeskiing a try. I was watching Rachael Burks and Kristi Leskinen religiously in all the ski films, and I just wanted to do what they were doing. And I was always playing around in the rail park and on the jumps. So I got into slopestyle. After placing fourth in slopestyle in the Olympics, I decided to retire. Slopestyle got more rigid when it became an Olympic sport. Back when I first started, there was a bit more freedom and creativity involved.
With filming and big mountain skiing, there’s more potential for creativity. In the past I remember always looking at the mountains and wanting to ski tour and ski pow, so I thought it was a good time to hang up the competition thing and learn something new.
Read more: The Show Must Go On – Mike Wiegele
Originally published in the November 2018 issue of SKI Magazine.