Tom Gellie watched an Austrian skier named Fritz at Sun Peaks and learned a counterintuitive tip from his coach Richie Berger: rotate your upper body into the top of the turn, opposite to what Australian ski teaching says. Testing it with his partner Jenny, Tom found it worked and later won short-turn competitions using the technique.
Chapters
So 2014, I just recently made the Australian APSI demo team. Thought my skiing was, was pretty good. It's funny, I look back now and I go, God, like the ego sometimes you have, thinking like people on the lift have got to be thinking this guy's pretty good. This season I was spending in Sun Peaks in Canada, and every morning I was lucky enough I would, I would get to the lift early, 8:30, and do a few laps on this run called Sundance, which It's kind of like this exhibition type run, so it's right next to the lift. Everyone who's skiing in the morning is watching the skiers come down. This one morning I was there, and I get to the bottom, I turn around and I look back up the hill. There's this guy coming down who is way better than me. He just looks— he's faster, his, his feet are moving faster, he's more tidy, disciplined, and he just looks like he knows what he's doing.. And I go, wow, I need to find out who this person is because, you know, Sun Peaks is not too big. Sort of spotted all the people that I thought were good, and then this guy appears. So he skis down. I go, hey, how are you going? My name's Tom. What's your name? Uh, hello, my name is Fritz. And Fritz is from Austria. I said, oh mate, great skiing, like watching you there, really impressive. I would, you know, love the chance to come and do do some runs with you one time? He said, yeah, sure, no problems. I have to go to work now, but I'll catch you later. So anyway, Fritz and I managed to meet up and find, uh, some time to go and ski together, and it was a great day. So we went up and we skied some black runs, and we're talking about different people we sort of knew in the industry. Just amazing skier. And one thing that really stood out was his short turn. That was something I'd been working on trying to improve. And if anyone here knows, like, a really good short turn is I think is harder than, than a good carve turn. I said, you know, how, how did you train your short turn to be so good? It's like, oh well, you know, I used to train with, with Richie Berger. Okay, wow, right, there's, there's a piece of the puzzle. This guy trains with Richie Berger. If you don't know who he is, look him up after this, but he is, he's a legend in the ski instructor world and probably one of the best all-round skiers you'll ever find, and still at his age. So Fritz had been trained by Richie Berger. I said, okay, so like, give me an example. What are some things you would do to train your short turns? Uh, anything you would say, you know, for me? And he's like, I gotta go soon, Tom. Okay, just one thing, what would you, what would you recommend? I said, Tom, you need to rotate your upper body. I just went, what? That is completely against everything we talk about in the Australian system, and I'd done Canadian as well. I was like, that's— I didn't say that to him, but he's basically hit me with something that I think is completely wrong and against everything I believe in up to this point about good skiing. And he goes, Tom, okay, I have to go. I'll catch you later. It's a really bad Austrian accent, I'm sorry, but doing my best. He leaves me there, skis off, making his perfect short turns. Which do not look like they have upper body rotation in them, by the way. But he's told me this, this, this clue, and I'm like, I don't know, like, I gotta give it a try. But, you know, I'm supposed to be on the Australian demo team. I have to present a certain way. Everything I've, you know, learned and, and tried so far has made sense and has worked. But I'll try it. So I ski down, sort of rotating into the the top of the turn, as he said, because that's when he said to do it. Oh, okay. And then I try and do it a little bit more on the next run, exaggerate it, really give it a proper go. And, and stuff starts to feel different. I'm feeling things that I know are good things, but I'm not sure if it looks right. So I'm feeling this stuff, but I don't know what it looks like. So I go find my wife Jenny. She's not my wife at this point, actually, but I go find her and I said, Jenny, I need you to film me skiing. I've been told this thing and I think it's, it's feeling good, but I'm sure it's just going to look wrong and I can't do it. She goes, okay, whatever. She's used to filming me all the time and gets sick of it, by the way, but luckily she, she's, you know, did it for me in this case. Filmed it, did my rotated into the top of the turn, short turns, stopped, turned around, grabbed the camera, looked at it, and I'm like played it through, and I hope this doesn't look— this doesn't look like rotation. Doesn't look at that one. Oh, the whole run doesn't look like I've rotated in the way that I would say is a— is an error in skiing. Doesn't look like at all. What is going on? I was kind of blown away by this, had some new feelings, spent the rest of the season working on it. And refining it and understanding— and I'm not going to explain exactly why now— it was sort of the right time for my skill level, was something that was missing in there. The point of the story is, have you ever experienced something, maybe not in skiing, but a moment in life or something where you've sort of finally tried a negative or something that you didn't believe in, was totally against the way you thought things worked? And you had a positive result, there was a good outcome. Because in this case, right before I was going to represent Australia at Interski in Argentina, I had a breakthrough in my short turns that really helped. I could, after that point, make faster short turns, just like Fritz. I actually had a more stable upper body as a result of this. I just thought it would be a great kind of message to everyone this season just remember about rotating your upper body. Like, if you're trying to do something and it's not working, try the thing that is opposite or sort of opposing, uh, against a belief or something that you're already currently doing. So let's see if we can delve into this a little bit, uh, a little bit further.
