Grete Eliassen, awardwinning professional freeskier, film maker, and women’s sports advocate, has fond memories of growing up in Cook County. The 24-year-old credits her early involvement with a variety of sports and her time on the Lutsen ski slopes with giving her the foundation for her soaring athletic career.
The Cook County News-Herald
caught up with Grete on the phone on December 1 at her Salt Lake City, Utah home, which meets her current requirements for a place to live—a good university, an airport, and of course— a ski area. “This is like Mecca for me,” said the former Lutsen resident.
Grete discovered her love of skiing early, at age two. She was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and the Eliassen family moved to Lutsen when she was in first grade so they could be closer to Lutsen Mountains Ski Area. She enjoyed skiing at Lutsen and she recalls seeing the older racers on Team Gilboa. “I remember thinking, ‘I want to be one of them!’” she said.
Photos c ou rtes y of Stan Ev ans/Red Bull Gr et e Eli assen , 24, at The Ca ny ons in Par k Ci ty, Utah on April 4, 2010—the day she made the Hi p J ump W or ld R ecor d, soaring 31 feet in the air. Background: Grete, back-country skiing i n Sa lt Lake Cit y, Utah. Friends c an follow he r gravity-defying adventures at www.greteeliassen.com.
It wasn’t long before she was. She joined the United States Ski Association (USSA) and became one of Coach Niel Atkinson’s star students on Team Gilboa. “If you want to be a ski racer, that is what you do,” she said.
Atkinson has been following Grete’s career. He said, “She was very diligent from the start when she started ski racing. She was also one of the nicest kids I ever dealt with. She is really going far.”
Grete also remembers being encouraged by Cook County Vikings Ski Coach Tom Crosby. She raced with Team Gilboa and spent free time at Lutsen with the Viking skiers. “Tom Crosby had the first-ever twin tip skis. He was a huge inspiration to me.”
When Grete was 13, her family moved to her dad’s homeland, Norway. Theylived in Olympic ski town Lillehammer and Grete continued ski racing. She said she “raced Europa,” which she did with the high energy and enthusiasm she had learned from Atkinson and Crosby. At age 13, she was named the Norwegian SL National Champion and shortly after became a member of the Norwegian Ski Team. In 2003, at the age of 16, Grete won the Super-G Junior Worlds in France and placed third in Slalom at the European Junior Olympics in Slovenia. However, after a few more years of competition, she realized that racing was not the type of skiing she wanted to be doing. As her website bio says, “She had a longing to be free.”
That longing led her to freeskiing and in her first year of freestyle competition she took first place in both the Rip Curl Freeski and the U.S. Open. Since she began her freestyle career she has won the U.S. Open four times and has captured two gold and silver medals at the Winter X Games. She is the only female skier to have medaled in both the first Halfpipe and Slopestyle X Games events.
And she has ventured into backcountry skiing—a heart-stopping activity that can be seen on-line at Grete’s website www.greteeliassen. com. However, she reassured this fainthearted reporter that although it looks like it, she isn’t just jumping off a cliff. “I go to resorts and parks and try to find runs where no one has skied before. But first, you take a look. You snowmobile up and check it out. It’s still a little variable, but a lot of it is visualization,” she explained. “I don’t do anything where I can’t land.”
She has also built up to the extreme runs, jumps, pipes and so on gradually, like her April 2010 Hip Jump World Record. One of her sponsors, Red Bull, came to her and asked if there was something else she wanted to attempt. Her reply is captured on another breath-taking video in which Grete skis at speeds of 60 miles an hour, hits a custom made 30-foot “hip” snow jump and soars more than 31 feet in the air. No other woman has ever come close to reaching this height on skis.
But Grete stressed, it took some time to reach that thrilling height. “You build up to 31 feet. You start smaller and go higher and higher,” she said, adding. “It all started with those hills at Lutsen.”
It was an incredibly exciting feat, Grete said, and satisfying because it set the bar high for women freeskiers. Because her other passion is promoting women’s sports. In nearly all of the publications she has been featured in— Freeze, Freeskier, Powder, Ski Racing,
Shape
and more—she has spoken out in support of gender equity in sports and for equal coverage of women’s sports. She is on the Advisory Council of the Women’s Sports Foundation and wants to see more women pursue their athletic dreams.
“I was really lucky in Cook County—we were able to do everything. My parents started soccer and I was involved in that, in tennis, in Little League. There was no ‘you can’t do that because you are a girl.’ Anyone could try anything. It is important to realize it hasn’t always been that way and that it isn’t that way everywhere,” Grete said.
To promote women’s sports and to inspire others, Grete has turned to filmmaking. She has appeared in a number of ski films—Uniquely
(Oakley Productions), Children of Winter
(Warren Miller), Pass It On
(Broken Radio) and others before setting out to film an all-female ski movie, Say My
Name.
The film features Grete (remember her name is Norwegian and is pronounced Gret-ah) and six other young women. The film—available at ITunes. com—follows Grete and her friends as they flip, spin and soar on slopes and pipes, helicopter to mountain tops and fly down amidst clouds of powder, and jump to extreme heights. It’s a fear- and gravity-defying film filled with amazing scenery and stunning glimpses of what freeskiing is all about.
And it is likely a good segue into another career after college—Grete is currently a business major at the University of Utah—and professional skiing. She would ultimately like to work for a women’s sports program— or network. She is thrilled that ESPN is considering establishing ESPN-W, showcasing women’s sports.
Her friends on the North Shore will certainly be rooting for her, as she seems to have been unaffected by her fame. National Geographic
Adventure
called her “the best women’s freeskier of the last decade” and ESPN describes her as “one of the best allaround skiers at WX.” Despite those accolades and many others, she said the Cook County residents who remember her as a “little blond girl” would still know her. “Now I’m just a little blond woman,” she said with a giggle.
She is not only the fearless girl people remember, she is also still nice under her “shred” attitude. When she won $25,000 at Whistler’s Ullr Girl competition in 2007, she donated her entire winnings to the Women’s Sport Foundation and Stand Strong Again (for athletes with spinal cord injuries). She has also twice made goodwill trips to Afghanistan with other snow athletes to support the troops.
Grete hopes that her travels will again bring her to Cook County. She recalled that on her most recent visit she and schoolmate Stephanie Williams spent some time at Lutsen Mountains. “We rode the gondola to the top of the mountain. It was so much fun. There are so many happy memories there.”
And she added, “I’m so grateful to everyone who supported me, whether it was in soccer or ski racing. Thanks for being such a great community.”
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