The Aussie daredevil Valentino Guseli targeting Winter Olympics history with triple event
Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli is used to pushing boundaries on the slopes but come February, the daredevil will chase Winter Olympics history, something his peers deem insane.
In a sport where it sometimes helps to be a little crazy, Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli is hellbent on doing something everyone else reckons is insane.
Olympic snowboarders pride themselves on pushing the boundaries, attempting outrageous tricks that mere mortals would never think of, let alone carry through.
Their stunts are often so wild and dangerous that even the very best competitors stick to one - or at most two - different events, to protect their safety as much as their sanity.
But not Guseli. The 20-year-old daredevil from the New South Wales south coast is spurning the easy approach for something out of the ordinary.
At next year’s Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, Guseli intends to compete in all three snowboard disciplines: half-pipe, slopestyle and big air.
His reason? He can’t pick between them.
“Lots of people, well everyone basically in my sport, specialises in either slopestyle, big air, or half pipe,” he told Code sports.
“There’s very few riders that try and compete in everything. I can’t decide which one I like the most, so I just kept doing them all.”
No male snowboarder has ever entered three events at the Olympics but Guseli is not your typical snowboarder.
A teenage sensation who broke the world record for the highest half-pipe jump when he was in his teens, he has genuine medal chances in all three disciplines after regularly ending up on the podium in World Cup competitions and picking up three crystal globes for winning the overall series.
Just 16 when he made his Olympic debut at Beijing in 2022, he finished sixth in the half-pipe but is confident he can handle three times the workload this time.
“Even in the last Olympics that was what I wanted to do, but I didn’t have much experience at that point since it was only my second year at World Cup level,” he said.
“So now four years later and with multiple podiums in every discipline, I definitely have a lot more experience so I’m gonna do my best to get all three.”
Six Australians have won two medals at the Winter Olympics in their careers but none have won two at a single Olympics.
Qualifying for all three events would have been a stroll in the park for Guseli before things suddenly went haywire last year and he injured his knee, requiring ACL surgery.
Because the qualifying period for the Olympics started in August 2024, he missed the first season, leaving him chasing enough points in the upcoming World Cup series to qualify.
If everything goes according to plan, he’ll still qualify for all three but the margin for error is thin.
“In theory Australia is allowed to have four in each discipline but we don’t have four in each discipline that are capable of making it,” he said.
“So, I basically just need to reach the international Olympic criteria, which is top 30 in the world, adjusted for other countries that have gone past four. So if Japan has eight people in the top 30, then the bubble spot gets pushed to 34.
“It usually ends up being around top 40, which any other year would have been no problem. But just because I had my little injury last November - which was a little injury but with a really big rehab that just takes a long time to get back - I missed all the comps and I’m at nothing.
“It’s not going to be as easy as it would have been. I absolutely believe that I can still make it happen as long as I just stay healthy, compete in all the comps, get consistent results”
To achieve his goal, Guseli is facing a treacherous and slippery path.
He’s just spent a month in Switzerland before heading to Austria for a month. After that, he’ll head to China for a fortnight, then the United States for a month, Canada for a week, back to America for seven days then finally to Italy for the Olympics.
It’s a hectic schedule made even more difficult because of the different requirements for each of his events, which are mind-boggling to consider.
“You need really good board control in general for all of them but especially half pipe because it basically feels like you’re in a vortex because there’s so much g-force and going wall to wall with so much speed,” he said.
“The discipline of half pipe it’s pretty self-explanatory. I think most people know what a half pipe is when you say it. You get five hits in a half pipe usually and you just do the biggest stuff you can.
“Slope style is basically a top to bottom run with six features usually three and jumps three rails and you basically just have to do the best tricks you can and execute your run as well as you can.
“Big air is just one jump. You usually get three hits. You have to spin two different directions and your best two jumps are counted towards your final score. It’s the same thing. It’s just doing the biggest tricks you possibly can.”
The elephant in the room is the danger snowboarders confront each time they set off down the icy slope.
Snowboarding may look like the coolest sport at the Olympics but it’s also among the most dangerous because it’s a long, long way to fall and ice is a cold and unforgiving surface to crash land on.
The tricks that Guseli does, the head over heels somersaults, the spins and the backflips, if they went catastrophically wrong, they could be fatal, so for all his bravado, he also has strike a balance where he looks after himself.
“The fear factor…I think as I’m maturing, I’m getting a different understanding of it.” he said.
More Coverage
“As I’m getting older, I realised that I should probably listen to it a little bit more than just completely ignore it and make sure to calculate everything really well when I’m doing it.
“Sometimes it’s better to take a little longer to warm up into something to just ensure complete safety and minimise the risk of a risky sport.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m scared but I would just say that I’m being smart and calculated, moving forward and really focusing on safety.”
Originally published as The Aussie daredevil Valentino Guseli targeting Winter Olympics history with triple event
Aussie gold medallist dies suddenly at 28
True motive behind Olympic icon’s boob job
