Stories from Bad Kleinkirchheim

Author: Verena Schneider

Sigi Grabner, world cup winner 2009/2010 and Olympic bronze medal winner in Turin 2006, is Carinthia’s number one snow board personality. What most people don’t know: everything began in his home in Saureggen, Ebene Reichenau. His parent’s house is the Hochsinner, Carinthia’s highest mountain farm, situated at 1,616 m. So the slopes of Bad Kleinkirchheim, St. Oswald and the Turracher Höhe were the places he practiced his first turns.

With the European Mastership Titel in 1995, he began to attract the attention of international snowboard circuits. And since then he has been successfully hunting (and been hunted) as the fastest man in the dance around the snowboard gates.

After having injured his ankle in December 2009, the season hasn’t gone well up to now. He was only able to get on the board a week ago, but is eager to get a medal on Cypress Mountain anyway. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job”, said the friendly “Lord of the Board”.

Maybe it’s his love of nature and the mountains that makes him the type of athlete that he is today. The fact is that snowboarding is not only his profession, it’s his calling. In addition to his active professional participation, he is a board developer and team manager of his own SG Pro Team.

He gets his energy between full time jobs by regularly visiting the old mountain farm of his family. Here, the gourmet in him gets culinary delights and he can relax in his favorite spots in the Nock Mountains. The passionate snowboarder doesn’t use the slopes of Bad Kleinkirchheim just for training purposes – the acclaimed star Sigi Grabner won two well paid parallel-slaloms in 1999 and 2000 in his very own living room – the Kaiser Mountain. So naturally, all his faithful fans not only from Saureggen but also from Bad Kleinkirchheim and all of Carinthia are crossing their fingers for him at his 4^th Olympic Games and wishing him all the best. And one thing’s for sure: Just being there is not enough. No, that’s not mine. I want to be on the podium.

So on Feb. 27^th, we’ll be saying…. Go Sigi, Go!

More about the Carinthian Snowboard professional: homepage www.sigigrabner.com Snowboard line www.sgsnowboards.com SG Pro Team Site www.sgproteam.com

Image and text courtesy of Verena Schneider for the editorial team of the website www.badkleinkirchheim.at