Henrik Harlaut: "Coaches Around The World Probably Hate Me"

Henrik Harlaut is a legend of the sport. Full stop. He's been an Olympian, a ski movie star, an X Games showstopper, and after over a decade in the biz, isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

To reach this heralded status, Harlaut didn't abide by the rulebook. In fact, he completely threw the rulebook out the window: Harlaut's known for his unique style and approach to skiing, foregoing current trends in favor of pursuing skiing on his own terms. In the freestyle space, Harlaut has always zigged when others zagged.

In a recent podcast with Bucked Up, Harlaut explained his tendency towards creativity over rigidity, proclaiming that "coaches around the world probably hate me."

"Coaches around the world probably hate me," Harlaut said. "Cause I'm like exactly that. The example of somebody that doesn't necessarily have a coach and never was brought up doing it the proper way."

Sam Buck -- the host of Bucked Up -- and Harlaut were discussing the introduction of freestyle skiing into the Olympics. For years, skiing events like slopestyle, halfpipe, and big air weren't a part of the international event. That changed when slopestyle became an Olympic sport at the 2014 Sochi, Russia, Games.

As Harlaut notes, there was tension associated with this decision. Freeskiing, freestyling, freeriding -- whichever moniker you use to describe modern strains of skiing, were created, at least in part, as a backlash to the rigidity of alpine racing and moguls.

The freeskiers who championed a liberated variety of skiing wanted out of the rulebooks, formulaic training practices, and strict competitions that had arisen around elite skiers.

However, as freeskiing aged, it slowly evolved into a sport that wasn't dissimilar from its more rigid forebears. Competitions with dense rulebooks became the norm, and high-level skiing became about spinning and flipping as much as possible. To skiing's core, contest-opposed crowd, the arrival of slopestyle skiing as an Olympic sport was the final nail in the coffin.

Still, Harlaut attended the Olympics in Sochi, donning his classic quadruple XL outerwear and standing out like he always does. At the end of his run, he caught eyes with the camera and shouted, "Wu-Tang is for the children!" likely confusing viewers at home who weren't familiar with skiing's quirkier side.

That brings us back to the why of Harlaut's coaches "probably hate me" statement.

He's using hyperbole -- you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who hates Henrik Harlaut -- but the statement is a recognition on Harlaut's part that he's had tremendous success in skiing without bending to the rules set by others or relying on someone who knows the "proper way" to do things.

Thus, Harlaut's presence in skiing might rankle that hypothetical coach who obsesses over doing tricks the "right way."

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