JOSS Day 8 - Big Airbag Session from Jon Olsson Video Blog on Vimeo.
Seen and heard through the publicity outlets of his blog and video-blog, Jon Olsson comes across as one of those adults who remain like a fun loving teenager’s edited highlights. For these people there seem to be no problems or issues serious enough to alter their happy demeanour. They also never let on how business savvy they are - although their clothes out-valuing real estate and cars to match do rather hint at that. Olsson’s a freeskier, which involves spending lots of time in the air performing flips and spins. One of Olsson’s flips is the DJ (Double Jon). This is a D-spin 720 (at various levels of disagreement that’s roughly a cross between a backflip 360 and corkscrew 720) into a flatspin 540 (I gave up trying to find a good definition, but the whole thing looks impressive, and you land skiing backwards).
Olsson’s been skiing incredibly well since school – he’s one of those people who are so good that their teachers mistake it for bad, and cocky with it. As the Ski Channel explains: ‘he was on pace to become quite the accomplished ski racer for the Swedish National Team. As history wrote it, Jon ultimately opted for a life of traveling [sic], sponsorship budgets, Red Bull shipments, lavish living, and a whole lot of park skiing.’ Olsson showed them all it seems, and kept himself in check with his own perfectionism. He set up the Jon Olsson Invitational big air competition, which he also wins sometimes, and the Jon Olsson Super Sessions in Åre, Sweden. He’s also making a comeback in ski racing, and planning to get onto the Swedish National Team again by the 2014 Olympics. Last year he proved his alpine skiing credentials by claiming first place in the Giant Slalom in the Nor-Am Cup.
Olsson’s a good inspiration for the would-be slickly phrased diarist: those people who like to claim that they can grab a can of diet coke and power up the MacBook whenever there’s a brief gap in their tight schedule of pro-active awesomeness. Olsson’s been pro-actively awesome since pre-pubescence. His blog entry from the 26th of March was titled ‘03.52’ and reads:
Time to get stuff done! Have a 7 Am flight out of Nice via Munich to Stockholm!
But first I need to:The ‘Lambo’ is a nice custom Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 SV, which sounds like a model of calculator and looks like a taser, and the acceleration of which you can see him repeatedly show off in the video blog. ‘Gumball’ is the Gumball 3000 rally, where he’ll be driving the Lamborghini for Team Betsafe. The rally starts in London on May 1st and ends up in New York seven days later - via Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Boston, Quebec City and Toronto. The Lamborghini now has its Betsafe and Gumball transfers applied ready for the rally. Sponsorship means that Olsson’s skis, car, clothes or some bit of the scenery around him at anytime will bear the logo of six or seven brands, and their ads pop up impressively around most third party articles about him you’ll find online.
-Pack up for the next 2 months including Åre and Gumball- Not easy.
-Place bills in order in my archive.
-Clean so the place is nice for when I get back here after Gumball.
-Unpack the Range and make a quick clean!
-Coordinate the Lambo pick up and tire change.
-Design the logo placements on the Lambo.
-And of course answer to a bunch of e mails!
Need to leave here at 05.40 so I better get going!
See you in Sweden!
JON
However, the 2010 Super Sessions have highlighted a problem that will likely follow Olsson through his skiing career – that of reconciling the necessity of sponsorship with the spontaneity and emotion of respected, audience-drawing freeskiers. This year saw the teams (each made up of two filmmakers, two professional skiers and a rookie) challenged to make the best five-minute video edit they could from 264 hours of filming time. The winners (Team Canada) were announced on the 18th of April, when all the teams’ video edits were shown. The teams’ edits were then to have been converted for general internet consumption - with the relevant sponsors’ logos added - and with staggered online releases from the evening of the 21st. Releasing them this way apparently maximises the website statistics and keeps the sponsors happy.
Instead of this happening, Team America (please, don’t) released their video on the 18th, with no sponsors’ logos (but with copious product placement at least). This upset Olsson. We’ll never know the personal feelings on either side, or exactly how much it had to do with the scoring and resultant grudges, but Olsson’s stated grievances were that Team America could have jeopardised the event by annoying the sponsors, and that it was unfair on the other teams. Team America maintained that the video edit was a product of their hard work, and all they had to show from the two weeks. They had, after all, come fourth in a competition where the winner takes it all (must be a Swedish thing). They seem to have sorted things out with each other now, but the brief exchanges over the 21st/22nd are worth noting. Through his PR-mindful posts on the blog, Olsson himself identified the dilemma that these events have raised for him:
I will [sic] much rather invite more stoked rookies to Åre then [sic] pros making it hard for the event and their friends. However, that would also suck as Team America had one of the best edits I have ever seen… All I know is that I want the best guys in Åre, but I want them to be happy! [1]Olsson will always be trying to get a three-way settlement, dealing with the obligations of sponsorship, skiers that push the boundaries of the sport but also break the terms and conditions of broadcasting it, and skiers that can’t compete with the wild cards’ performance but will toe the publicity line. Even if more personal reasons underlie what happened at the Super Sessions this year, it’s easy to imagine this dilemma cropping up again. The skiers – most of whom are in their late teens to early 20s – are putting their skills and endearing egos on show, with hip hop soundtracks on their videos and a fashionable vocabulary for their chilled, freestyle lifestyle. The culture they live in can sometimes clash with the requirement for them to talk to a camera enthusiastically for a video blog at strategic points of each day.
Perhaps the sponsors should note how these antagonisms are part of the skiers’ appeal for fans (fans have been taking sides, and lapping up the chance to call either party douchebag/s). Sponsors could easily work their logos into the background of the skiers’ candid behaviour, rule breaking and bad mouthing, and then they’d milk the bigger audiences such content pulls in. It would certainly be interesting to free Olsson of his always-conscious-of-the-sponsors emissary role and see him vent his spleen now and then, alongside the awesome jumps.
[1] Jon Olsson, ‘Release thoughts and Team America…’, jon-olsson.com, April 20th, 2010, < http://www.jon-olsson.com/?p=1252>.
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