Olympian Dom Harington visits Morzine

Last week, Sochi 2014 GB Olympian Dom Harington dropped by Treeline HQ for a few days snowboarding in Morzine. Dom recently represented Great Britain in the Snowboard Half Pipe event in Sochi, Russia at the Winter Olympics. As a good friend of ours, we were stoked to catch up with him after such an exciting & successful few months.

Dom timed his visit to Morzine well with a fresh dump of pow and Rock the Pistes music festival hitting the Portes du Soliel. We all went on a big team shred with fellow top UK snowboarder & team Treeline rider Andy Nudds who was also in town. With lots of fresh snow around, it was the perfect time to hit up some drops in Fornet followed by some tree runs in Lindarets then  a few laps through Arare park before stopping for a burger at our fave spot, Changabangs in Avoriaz. Then to Robo’s in Morzine for an apres Mutzig.

Dunc managed to put together a little edit from the day, check it out below:

Shred 27 March from Duncan Ross on Vimeo.

Lee Scratch Perry & the Mad Professor were playing in Les Crosets on Saturday as part of the Rock The Pistes so a big gang of us all headed to Switzerland for some live music. With the stage set right on the slopes, the mountains provided a pretty epic backdrop to the beats.

After being glued to the Winter Olympics in February & watching Dom compete in the half pipe on the TV from Morzine we couldn’t wait to ask about his experience at Sochi 2014…

Last week I was shooting photos for my sponsor Animal in Chamonix and as Morzine is only one hour away I thought I would head over here for a few days to have some fun runs and to take advantage of all the new snow that has fallen recently.

Today we went up to Fornet, there is loads of snow in that valley and some fun jumps and cliffs. We had a good crew of treeline riders and Duncan did some filming. We also had a couple of runs through the big park which was in really good shape.

How does it feel to be an Olympian?

Ha ha I’m stoked! Ive wanted to go the Olympics for a long time so it is a bit of a dream come true.

One of the best moments was when I finally knew I had qualified just a couple of weeks before. But then the whole experience was amazing and everyday there was awesome. I watched so many different events that I had never seen before. Plus we got to ride around the whole mountain which was closed to everyone except the athletes.

The pipe actually was a bit sketchy! It was quite bumpy which made it hard to carve through the flat bottom, I still loved riding it though just because we were at the Olympics!

Going in the commentary box was a very last minute thing but was good fun! It was quite hard commentating as sometimes I was so into watching the riding that I would forget to speak! 

Some of the best events I saw were ski arials, bob sled, skeleton and ski jumping, all those sports are so gnarly when you see how fast or big they go in real life! 

There is some amazing terrain in Krasna Polyana which is the resort where the pipe was. A few steep chutes and lots of tree runs and all though there were only a couple of snow falls I still managed to find some half decent powder.  

Well before the event we were pretty focused on training and staying healthy but then as soon as it was finished we went out most nights. There was one club in particular that was always packed and had acrobats, dancing girls, singers etc, it was pretty crazy!

Any free vodka?

There were a couple of functions with drinks but in the clubs it was really expensive! I remember Dara who had one a gold in ski slopestyle kept waving her medal to get free drinks but unfortunately I didn’t have one of those.

How was the food?

There was a lot of it but after a month in the same canteen all the smells from all the different foods blended together and put you off a bit! There were 3 different athletes villages and some of them had better food so we went there a few times. There was a free McDonalds which I ate too much of!

Outside the village there was a chance to have some pickled herring and other meats on black bread but generally sochi was set up to be an international place for the Olympics so it didn’t feel like we were in the “real” Russia.

Ha ha, it was funny how many athletes you saw at Mcdonalds. I guess after 4 years of training you deserve a blow out and to eat some crap food! I never ate more than 3 big macs in one sitting though.

Yeah it is great how many people say they enjoyed watching snowboarding on the Olympics. Even people who have never seen snowboarding before are now experts on all the trick names! Hopefully it encourages more people to get into it and enjoy it as much as we do.

Yeah definitely if you fancy a bit of an adventure. The mountain is really good and it is only an hour away from the black sea which is pretty special.

At the moment I have a few fun snowboarding trips planned. I am going to Norway to shoot a jeep commercial, then snowbombing in Austria.

Any new sponsors?

Yeah I just signed with Nitro snowboards a couple of weeks ago. I am going to Austria with them at the end of April so it will be cool to go the head offices and then test out the new boards.

We had a super fun few days with Dom & felt pretty privileged to have an Olympian staying with us! To keep  up to date with Dom and all his snowboard news, follow him on Twitter @DomHarington, Facebook @domharington, Instagram @domharington & visit his website www.domharington.co.uk