Candide Thovex on a Warm Up Run Skis Better Than Any of Us On Our Best Day

The best professional skiers among us do more than just hawk their wares and convince us we need to ski on their equipment if we want to even attempt to ski the mountain like they do. The sign of a truly successful pro skier is their ability to make us want to go skiing. Then there’s Candide Thovex, whose whisper of an existence suddenly becomes very loud whenever he emerges from the shadows with new footage.

Watching him ski does two things for me: Gets me teary-eyed with inspiration and sinker deeper in the couch cushions, unworthy to call myself a skier. For instance, this morning the French phenom bestowed upon us loyal subjects a 33-second clip captioned “Warming up,” shot by fellow Faction teammate Aziz Benkrich. Imagine Usain Bolt showing up to your middle school track meet and you might get a sense of how dominating this man’s skiing truly is.