The Slovak shredder on not living with cows, loving park days with friends and how she felt about that infamous Whitelines piece
Interview by Sam Haddad
Hey Basa, how’s it going? Have you been getting lots of early season riding in?
Hey! Everything’s good thanks, I’m enjoying my time at home right now before I fly to Breckenridge. I haven’t got much riding done so far to be honest. Four days on Hintertux, one week in Saas Fee and three days on Dachstein. I can’t wait to fly to Breck with all the girls and I hope that they have more snow then we do.
What have been the highlights so far?
So far this season? Hmm besides riding, definitely the premiere of ‘5 more minutes… please’ in Munich and the movie itself. I went there with Ana Rumiha and Urksa Pribosic and I thought I’m not gonna survive those two days because we were constantly laughing and I had proper stomachache. If you haven’t seen the movie you should definitely check it out, the full movie is going to be at coolermag.com/videos from next Tuesday 22nd November at 130pm!
Do you remember your first ever shred?
Oh yes I remember it pretty clearly. My first board was a second hand Salomon board and it was really funny looking. We went to a resort with my Mum and I was hiking the first three days with no clue how to ride the board, so I tried to watch the other people what they are doing. For the first two seasons I was just cruising slopes and then I somehow found my way to the park.
You grew up in Slovakia, what was that like?
My parents were thinking about moving to Canada when I was 4 and I often wonder if I’d be snowboarding or not if we’d ended up living there. I’m really happy I could grow up here in Slovakia and I had amazing childhood that’s for sure.
How has it changed in the last 10 years?
Living here is different from Western countries. I mean we don’t live with cows in our houses or anything and we can drink tap water and yes we do have McDonald’s and highways but people still earn a lot less money and can not afford a lot. It was like this 10 years ago and will probably be like this for another 10 years.
Where are you going to be based this winter?
I never really have a base. I’m always somewhere around Europe driving my car, sleeping in rented appartments, hotels or staying with my friends. We were discussing with Ana Rumiha where we would like to go film this year and I think it’s gonna be a really busy season. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to pay a rent on somewhere in Austria and actually never be there.
What are you most looking forward to this winter?
Filming! As I already said I’m gonna travel a lot with Croatian star Ana Rumiha (which I’m super stoked about) and our plans sounds banging. We would like to go to Helsinki again, Stockholm, if there is snow around here in Euroland we will go to Poland, Macedonia, Bulgaria. Basically we’re gonna go wherever the snow will be.
What are your favourite parks?
Well I can shred the best park ever alone and not have fun or I can shred the shittiest park in fog with my friends and have an epic day. So for me it matters a lot with who I’m riding with. In Europe I really like Dachstein and consider it my home resort because I feel at home there. Out of Europe I’ve only been to Breck, Keystone and Park City and all three of them were really really good. But I still prefer Europe.
And who are your favourite people to lap it with?
Ana Rumiha and Aimee Fuller. They are so much fun to be with but they are both so different. Aimee is the young one, super hyped and has lot of energy (sometimes too much for me to handle :D) I don’t know where the hell she gets it from and Ana is the older one :D, she gives me so much good advice the whole time and pushes me a lot.
So Whitelines ran a pretty incendiary piece on a Roxy trip to Chamonix last year, though with some awesome pix from Matt George! As one of the girls featured in the piece how did you feel about it?
Aimee dropped me a message asking if I saw the article and if not I should read it right now. And I was like, “Oh my god, why is it bad?” And she just said go and read it. After I read it the first time I wasn’t really stoked about it to be honest. Then I read it again and again and well it’s Johno Verity’s point of view but I think sometimes he crossed the line a little bit and some stuff wasn’t really necessary. I know that English people have a sarcastic sense of humour, but there was something more in my opinion.
Did the writer not describe the trip how you imagined it?
Well I do look at it differently because I’m a rider, it was my first time in Chamonix and he was our guide and filmer. If I were to write the article for sure it would have been different, maybe less shocking for some of us, even though I would still write it truly just with my point of view.
He seemed to have a little niggle at each of the girls. Margot for claiming, Aline for rowing with the photographer, Aimee for being ill, you for being grumpy…
We are all different girls with different attitudes and personalities. Margot and claiming? Who cares… None of you ever claimed a stomped trick because you were stoked??? Well I did a couple of times and I even have it on film and what. Aimee for beeing ill??? She was travelling her ass off around the world without a rest, we are human beings and need to rest. Me being grumpy? You never had a really bad day in your life before or what?
He also said girls slam more tricks than land them, do you think that was kinda sexist?
We do slam and we can take hard slams as well but I personally would have started the article with something different than, “If you’re gonna film with girls you should be aware of getting more slams then stomped tricks” in the first paragraph.
Cheers Basa and let us know your latest sponsors so we can give them a shout out!
Thanks a lot guys for this interview and thanks for reading 🙂
Sponsors: Roxy, O2, Citroen, Transform gloves.
