Ane Enderud, rising Norwegian star of freeride

Ane grew up in Oslo and made her first turns in Hemsedal: “I have been skiing since I could walk. I was born in Oslo, Norway and luckily my family spent all our weekends and holidays in Hemsedal and introduced me to my biggest passion in life. I soon realized that skiing was a lot of fun. In the beginning it was charging in the trees that took all my attention. For the first eight years Hemsedal was where I skied every time I had the chance to get away from school. Then I started to race and to be able to ski even more the resorts in Oslo became my evening hangout. I travelled around Norway with a bunch of kids training and skiing competitions. I had a lot of fun, won most of the comps, went off for ski school and started training for the national team then I got tired of it.”

She then moved to Chamonix, the freeride mecca, to take a season off and have fun with friends. She ironically did not even bring freeride skis, only her snowboard and a pair of telemark skis. Yet, this is where she found the inspiration and motivation to become a professional freerider.

In 2008, Ane competed in the Freeride World Tour event in Mammoth where she took 4th place taking 6th in the Freeride World Ranking. She then went on to compete in the entire Freeride World Tour 2009 taking 2nd in Sochi, 5th in Squaw Valley, 4th in Tignes, 1st in Chamonix (FWQ event) and topped off her performances by winning the finals in Verbier, thus was crowned Freeride World Champion 2009.

She was full of emotions when she realized she won the title and the recognition that it brought in Norway. She is considered one of the most influential female athletes in Norway. Her school has even granted her a leave of absence to concentrate on her career encouraging her to pursue this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Her joy soon turned to concern in the months that followed. Because of economic issues having nothing to do with her performances, her then sponsors began dropping contracts. Ane was very disappointed and even questioned whether she would be able to participate in the Freeride World Tour again. Her optimism got the best of her and she set out searching for new partnerships.

Ane has now signed several new long term contracts with brands that correspond to her profile including Sobe Pure Rush Energy Drink, O’neill, Völkl/Marker/Dalbello and a few others. She is looking forward to working with them in product development in the coming years.

As for 2010, “of course I want to defend my title, but I have many different projects planed too. Amongst others I‘m going to film with SVP this winter. Having fun skiing is the most important thing to me, and I‘m sure I‘m going to have plenty of it this season.”