We caught up with Lipstick Production‘s rider and Austrian rising star Tini Gruber for the last snow chat of the season.

Interview by Anna Langer

Hey Tini, is there still snow where you are right now?
On the mountains yes, but in the valley [Zillertal] itself it’s been gone for quite a while actually. It dumped again yesterday though, so Hintertux should be pretty good again!

How are you going to end the season?
We’ve got Snowbombing here this week, so that means a lot of partying. And then Hintertux again, there’s still a month or two left!

What plans do you have for summer?
I’ll look for a job and then head to New Zealand for three weeks in August again [check out our interview with her after the first time she went!]. I’m looking so forward to that, NZ is such a beautiful place! I’m going with the Austrian National Team and I think, there will already be the first qualifications for the Olympics 2014.

Are you going to try to qualify?
Yeah!

Where do you stand on the whole slopestyle debate that was discussed all winter?
I think it’s really cool, that slopestyle is now Olympic too. The major part of your regular audience probably won’t even know what that is, and so being Olympic will make the sport more popluar, which will bring more support in the future too. At least I hope so.

And you enjoy contest riding, don’t you?
Well, it’s alright.

Do you prefer filming?
I do like contests, but it’s hard to combine both. If you do a lot of contests, you don’t have much time left to go filming. So I try to do only a couple of contests and go filming as well. You can forget a proper part if you’re a full on contest rider.

Did that work well this year?
Yeah actually it did. Especially because of the great snow, that was epic for filming. But it was very different from the year before. Last winter I rode park almost everyday, when this year I rode powder all the time and only started to hit the park mid-season or even later. And that’s something you really feel, when you start so late. I’m not gonna complain though!

You filmed with Lipstick Productions again, how was that?
Amazing, always.

Different from the year before?
Actually yes, better I’d say. Especially with the snow, we couldn’t build a single powder jump last year. This year we did loads of in the powder and also some street stuff, that wasn’t possible the previous winter either.

Is there something you have conducted for next season?
No idea, that’s still so far away… But definitely more filming, some contests, but apart from that we’ll see.

Is there a certain trick you wanna learn?
Oh yes, there’s loads… But mainly I want to improve tricks I can do already, like Switch BS 5s for example. Do it safer, with more style and on bigger jumps.

Do you have some advise on how to approach big kickers?
Hm… Just try it! After you tried it, you’ll be all “it wasn’t that hard at all, why didn’t I try this sooner?” anyways.

Watch her part in Lipstick’s 5 more minutes…please?!

Tini rides for Billabong, Smith Optics and hotzone.tv