Living on the edge - and loving it

The Marlborough Express

Neil Williman left Blenheim when he was 16, and he's been riding high ever since. After six back-to-back ski seasons, he's won his first big mountain skiing competition, become a sponsored skier, and managed to fit in a degree in natural resource engineering at Canterbury University along the way. He's a busy man, but found time to chat to Canterbury University journalism student ANNA PEARSON.

`I've knocked myself out, concussed myself, had 14 stitches in my head, broken my hand, broken my arm." Blenheim man Neil Williman, 23, sits on a couch that's seen better days in his well-loved student flat in Christchurch. He's listing the ski injuries he's suffered over the years.

He has that typical outdoor student look – worn jeans, an old-T-shirt and his dark-brown hair hasn't seen a brush in a while.

"Surgery on both my knees, compression fractures in my spine, as well as lots of little things like sprained thumbs, bruises, scrapes, and general unimportant things."

But they're not the type of injuries that stop you skiing, he says with a grin.

On the mountain you'll see Neil charging around in bright green baggy ski-trousers, a blue jacket, a green helmet, and fat twin-tip skis that enable him to ski backwards.

After half-a-dozen back-to-back seasons on the mountain he has well and truly found his ski-legs, winning his first big mountain skiing competition, the K2 Big Mountain Chill Series at Mt Olympus, and becoming a sponsored skier.

"Getting sponsored was great, because it feels like people are paying attention to how much you love skiing and how hard you're trying at it," Neil laughs.

"And that you're succeeding."

Big mountain skiing, aka "freeskiing", is an extreme sport that involves descending large steep mountain faces at high speeds, usually on the ungroomed snow of the back country.

Neil won the August K2 Big Mountain event with a gutsy rock-dodging descent via a narrow chute.

"I didn't expect to podium. I definitely didn't expect to win. I was actually thinking about not going because I had a lot of university work to do. I knew there were lots of good skiers going and I was feeling kind of sick of finishing like fifth-to-10th-ish," Neil recalls.

"There were lots of frothing little grommets ready to rip the shreds out of everything."

That's ski-speak for tough competition, but he won. He also came fifth at the Volkl New Zealand Freeski Open held at Remarkables Alpine Resort in Queenstown, also held in August.

These results came on top of receiving sponsorship from American ski brand Armada, British outerwear company Surfanic, and Canterbury-based Gnomes Snowsports Shop.

Neil is quick to note, however, that it's not all about winning and sponsorship.

"Those things are great but I think it's more a reflection on how much work you have been putting into it recently.

"I think that good experiences with your friends are the most important things in skiing, and life. That's what motivates you to push yourself, ski lots, and have a good time.

"So as long as you're doing that then it comes together for you."

Through winter, Neil led a largely double life, skiing and studying natural resource engineering at Canterbury University.

Skiing and university don't leave much spare time, he says, but university is important.

"I'm not going to be a skier forever. I love skiing but I'm not going to make any money out of it.

"To get an enjoyable, interesting, and well-paid job later in life seems a lot easier if you get a degree, I think."

Growing up in Blenheim, Neil spent a lot of time at Mt Robert; his family were members of the club field there until it closed down. He started skiing when he was about three years old; before he could walk his parents would take him on the slopes in a backpack.

When he was 16, he left Blenheim for Wanaka's Mount Aspiring College – "I wasn't very popular in Blenheim and didn't have many friends" – then went on to train as a ski-patroller at Tai Poutini Polytechnic in Wanaka.

His parents, Brin and Jo, still live in Blenheim. Brin is a hydrological engineer and keen mountaineer and Jo is the school library administrator for the northern South Island. Last year the family, including sister Kate, did a five-day back-country ski trip to the Tasman Glacier in Mt Cook National Park – remnants of an active upbringing.

But there is a dark side to Neil's chosen passion, brought home when his hero, American freeski legend and the inventor of ski base-jumping, Shane McConkey, died in Italy's Dolomite Mountains in March; "He made things like ski base-jumping look so easy and safe because he had been doing it for so long. I'd been like, `Oh, sweet – I can do that. I might start doing that soon.' Him dying made me realise how much risk you're taking."

But Neil hasn't been put him off and is preparing to head to Europe in December for the northern winter – more specifically to Chamonix in France, the birthplace of big mountain skiing: "I'm really excited and kind of nervous about it. I've got a British passport and a house but," he trails off, "no job. Yeah need to get one of those."

But how does a student fund his way overseas three years in a row? Chattels – two surfboards, a guitar, two pairs of skis, furniture and clothes are all being put up for sale. Participation in clinical drug trials will pay for his flights.

He says he gets scared before he drops in on a "gnarly line", especially in competitions and a lot of the time his brain is trying to think of reasons not to do it.

"There's this split second a couple of metres before the edge of the cliff where your mind realises it's the last moment you can stop and pull out and not hit it."

He says sometimes people do pull out and stop at those times, "but once you're committed and you know you are going to do something it's just a great feeling.

"One of the most important things for me is going home and being like, `I did that. I was scared of it and I did it anyway'. It's the best feeling in the world."