WELCOME ENAK GAVAGGIO
WELCOME ENAK GAVAGGIO
"Take skiing seriously without taking yourself too seriously". That could be the mantra of the new OXBOW team rider!
For over 20 years, Enak Gavaggio, one of France's most successful skiers, star of skicross, the X Games and the web, and Olympic athlete, has been hiding behind his characters. Têtard, Dark Lord, Rancho... If you've been following skiing for the last two decades, you're bound to have heard of these fictional characters, all of them Enak Gavaggio’s brain children. Open to all disciplines, Enak is "skiing in all its breadth", as he claims under his Rancho moustache.
The son of a shepherd, he spent his childhood playing in nature and exploring the mountains of Savoie and Jura. Although he started out in Alpine skiing, it was in ski cross that Enak wrote his legend. A record number of medals at the X Games, podium finishes at World Cups and Championships, a 5th position in the Vancouver Olympic Games... The enfant terrible of French skiing raises as many tricolour flags on the podiums as fingers to the judges and other institutions. A strong personality, an authentic man, described by those close to him as "a cartoon character projected into real life" or "a sensitive punk with a cardboard shell".
Because if you take the time to dig beneath the snow, you'll discover a skier with a big heart. Enak is a good, generous buddy who likes to share, bring people together and pass on his knowledge. As the founder of GMX Les Arcs and co-founder and president of the Free Ski Academy, he passes on his passion and experience to younger skiers. He "doesn't want to be like the grown-ups who forget their childhood dreams” and strives to be the best possible mentor for the new generation of free skiers.
Keep your childlike soul. This seems to be the mentality that Enak Gavaggio has chosen from the outset. That would explain why he stopped celebrating his birthday at 17. Some people call it Peter Pan syndrome, but at OXBOW we prefer to see it as a state of mind. It's about keeping fun in our lives. Work, family life, taxes, loans... We've lost count of all the overly serious things that can lead our childlike souls astray. Grown up life is not worse, it's just different. We may ride less, but we still have just as much fun. And we share it, with family and friends. When Enak Gavaggio approached us about joining the OXBOW team, we saw it as an opportunity to have a new ambassador who would do his utmost to remind us that, on or off the snow, you've got to keep having fun.