Free skier Bess Manson Hannah Peters
Picture a terrifyingly steep, snowcovered mountain chute landmined with cliffs, trees and hidden drop offs. This is the sort of terrain Janina Kuzma navigates for a living.
Kuzma will represent New Zealand in free skiing at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
It’s not a sport many outside the skiing world are familiar with.
Kuzma, 32, describes it simply as an extreme sport. That might be under playing it. Free skiers have the kind of guts and healthy attitude to fear that allows them to bomb it down a mountain, dodging rocks, trees and anything else that gets in the way, with the aim of getting from the top of a peak to the bottom of the run faster than anyone else.
The ‘gnarlier’ (Kuzma’s words) your line down the mountain, the better your score. It’s not for the faint-hearted.
Kuzma, who will compete in the Olympic women’s free skiing half pipe event next week, is not faint of heart and is ‘pumped’ and ready for her close-up with whatever the Olympics can throw at her.
As the seven-time New Zealand Big Mountain Champion, two-time Canadian Freeski Champion, two-time World Heli Challenge Champion and second overall in the world for half pipe, she’s confident she’s in with a fighting chance for a medal.
It’s her second Olympics, after competing in the half pipe event in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 when it was introduced into competition. She took on half pipe skiing only in 2011 but was immediately smitten.
There’s a blatant irony in the fact that Kuzma spent her youth in perpetual summers, only to swap them for back-toback winters from the age of 17.
Born in Brisbane to a German father and Filipino mother, she and her twin sister and brother grew up first in Papua New Guinea till civil war saw them move to the jungles of Borneo where their father worked in coalmining logistics.
They were pretty free range parents, she says. ‘‘They just let us run wild. We’d go bushwhacking through the jungle, build forts, climb trees, stalk out animals. It was a pretty incredible way to grow up.
‘‘You think of all these animals on the endangered list, we had them in our backyard – orangutans, snakes, birds. All this crazy wildlife.
‘‘I was this little girl who would be running around in the jungle by myself. I look back and can’t believe my parents let me do that but I guess that’s what made us feel so free and make us love the adventure of life.’’
It was a rude awakening then when she and her sister were packed off to boarding school in Brisbane.
‘‘It was a very scary moment when mum said, ‘Allright, see you guys, I’m out of here.’ It felt like the whole room was closing down on me. It was tough, but we got through it.’’
Ever since she can remember the family have taken annual skiing holidays, mostly to Canada.
She was six when she donned her first planks. ‘‘We were on a family trip in Germany and I was the only one who couldn’t ski. My brother and sister were flying down the hill and my dad just grabbed me by the back of my jacket and said, ‘Go down! Snow plough! Pizza!’’’ Once she found her ski legs, she was off. It’s all she’s ever wanted to do, she says. And remarkably, she’s been able to make a career out of her love of the sport.
As soon as she finished secondary school she started chasing winters.