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Matty Richard — for the love of it

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions." - Dalai Lama He was The Next One. The Heir Apparent.
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Getting down to earth.

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions."

- Dalai Lama

He was The Next One. The Heir Apparent. In the neo-tribal world of competitive big-mountain freeskiing — a world that Whistlerites had dominated virtually from the sport's inception — the unassuming young newcomer was making quite an impression on his peers. Here was a skier, they all knew, who could really make things happen on the hill. Another Whistler kid with impeccable style and big... well, let's just say big enthusiasm for vertical dancing.

Like Jeff Holden before him and Hugo Harrison and PY Leblanc and Robin Courcelles and Ian Macintosh (and so many more)... the oh-so-understated Acadien could put tracks on slopes that most (sane) people would think were beyond reason. And he always made it look so dang easy — smoooooth was his middle name.

But try as he might, Mathieu (Matty) Richard could never quite find the right gear in competition. "I was always consistent," he explains. "Just not the best of the best." And smiles. "It's not like I was totally out of it. I scored a lot of top-ten finishes on the World Tour. But when push came to shove..." He sighs. "I couldn't close the deal."

He says he knows why now. "My theory is that I was too concerned with wanting to stay on my feet. I was too 'careful' with my comp runs." He lets a beat go by. "I'm totally OK with exposure, you know. It's not like I was afraid or anything. It's just that I let the fact that I was in a competition play with my head too much..."

Hang on a second. Before we move forward with this story, it might be worthwhile to put things in perspective. For those who don't follow the esoteric world of competitive big-mountain freeskiing (think big-wave surfing — only in an alpine setting), "a lot of top-ten finishes on the World Tour" is nothing to sneeze at. Indeed, Matty was a contender in every event he entered.

And he did them all: from Verbier to Chamonix, Les Arcs to Snowbird and Kirkwood in the U.S. But given the expectations that surrounded him — and the history of success that preceded him — well, there wasn't all that much wriggle room for the young Whistler competitor.

Eventually, he says, he just let the comp-thing slip away. "Why? I don't know really. Sometimes I really miss it. But then I don't..." A beat goes by. Another. He's smiling again. "The biggest thing for me was that the comps took too much time away from my skiing. I remember one year realizing 'oh my God! I didn't ski Fissile this winter.'" He pauses. Grabs a breath. "I mean, Fissile! Can you believe it? Not once! That's when I realized I just wanted to be a skier again."

He laughs. "I've come to accept that I'm not really a 'competitor.' I'm competitive, no question about that." More laughter. "But that's different. I like going into the mountains and seeing what I can do there. But all the travel, the costs, the lost time associated with contests... it seems pointless at times. Besides, I've done so many more interesting things since I quit competing."

Did I mention that Matty was originally from New Brunswick? From a family that can trace its Acadian ancestry all the way back to 1604 and the original plot of farmland granted to Alexandre Richard in what is now the province of Nova Scotia? I mean, it's not a background usually associated with big-mountain adventures... or downhill skiing prowess for that matter.

But that's what makes this story so interesting.

"I was born in Moncton, in 1981," he starts. "My parents were super outdoorsy and my older brother and I spent much of our youth playing outside — camping, sailing, hiking, whatever."

He still remembers his first time on skis. "It was at a place called Crab Mountain." He laughs. "All I could do was go straight. And I didn't know how to stop — on my first run, I took out the whole ski rack at the bottom of the hill!"

Later memories reveal him skiing with his dad. "He'd be cruising down the groomers, and I'd be skiing next to him... only I'd be skiing in the forest, deeking in and out of the trees." A pause. "Even now, when my dad comes skiing with me at Whistler he always says: 'you haven't changed, Mathieu...'"

Like most other Canadian boys, Matty spent a few seasons flirting with hockey. "All my buddies were hockey players. And for a while, I thought I wanted to be one too. I still loved skiing though. But my dad said: 'we can't afford both sports. You're going to have to choose.'" He shrugs. Sighs. "So I quit skiing for a season (I was a pretty good skater too. I loved hockey). Still, it didn't take me very long to realize that what I really wanted to do was go shred the hill with my dad."

That was the turning point.

When it comes to skiing, explains Matty, you have to understand that New Brunswick is not exactly on the leading edge of the sport. "The Maritimes are a little backwards that way. So if you really want to know what's happening in the ski world, you have to travel." He says he can still remember the thrill he felt when he first went down to Maine to ski legendary Sugarloaf. "Seeing that little bit of 'alpine' at the very top of the mountain — wow! That was so exciting."

Back then, he says, if a local skier said he was 'going west,' that meant Banff and Lake Louise. "Whistler wasn't even on the map..." That is, until a friend showed up at school with a brochure for the Camp of Champions. "I think we were just finishing Grade 11," says Matty. "And that camp looked so cool that we convinced our parents to send us there as a pre-graduation present."

It was love at first sight. Actually, it was love from the moment he got off the plane. "Wow! We landed in Vancouver. I was blown away. It was the ocean that first got my attention. That was the biggest thing for me. But the trip up Howe Sound, and the islands rising from the sea, and then seeing all those peaks in the Tantalus Range as we drove up the canyon: Wow! Wow! Wow!"

Forget Banff. After a week on Blackcomb Glacier, Matty knew exactly where he was headed after graduation. "I think we arrived around December of 1999," he says. "Fortunately for us, we already had a few connections from back home." And that, he says, was crucial. "Without those contacts — or without my friends Dominique Melançon and Kris Cormier — I don't think I could have stuck it out. You see, Acadian culture is all about family and friends and social gatherings." He stops. "If I'd been here alone, I don't know, but I'm not sure I could have stayed."

A quick aside: Many years ago I had the opportunity to spend a month working on a story in Louisiana's Cajun country. As with many other visitors there, I was overwhelmed by the genuine hospitality of its residents. How can I put this? They were simply good people. No pretensions. No attitude. Just straightforward friendly. I'm reminded of my Cajun sojourn every time I see Matty. Although the two branches of the original Acadian family were violently torn apart in the mid 1700s (remember Longfellow's Evangeline?), they still share strikingly similar cultural traits. To whit: I don't know many elite athletes in Whistler who are friendlier or more approachable than Matty Richard. I figure the guy would give me the shirt off his back — literally! — if it happened to fit and I needed it badly enough.

Maybe that's why Matty is one of the few pro skiers who's managed to keep the sponsors happy — without having to "compete" to prove their worth. "It's just getting better and better," he says. "My sponsors love what I'm doing, being on the mountain every day, stoking people up for skiing, having adventures, even shooting from time-to-time with Blake (Jorgensen) or the Sherpa crew..." He lets a few beats go by. "As far as my sponsors go, I really don't have a lot of responsibilities. They just want me to ski as much as I can."

So that's what he does now. He skis — as much as 120 days a winter. "I ski Blackcomb more than Whistler. And I'm still so-o-o-o-o passionate about it. Every day on the mountain, for me, is the best day ever." He laughs. "My friends give me a lot of grief over that... but I just love being on my skis. Good days and bad."

And then there's the Coast Mountain range. "We live in a truly magical playground," he says. "You don't have to go to Alaska to ski big spines. You don't need to fly to Europe to ski big exposure. It's all here, within reach." As are the skiers. "I did this amazing mountaineering trip last year with Kye Petersen, Johnny Foon and Jia Condon," says Mattie. "It was right in our backyard too. An amazing feast." A pause. "And it was a great group to ski with. At one point we realized that between the four of us, we had the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s covered." He stops. Grins one last time. "Now that," he says, "is true mountain culture."