Getty Image / Patrick Smith
Swedish skier Jesper Tjäder made headlines years ago by creating the first-ever loop as a freestyle skiing element. It was a cool build and led to some sick free riding but he has taken it even further by cutting off the top of the loop to created the ‘Impossible Loop‘ and become the first-ever skier to land this trick.
Though honestly, it’s not even really fair to call this a ‘trick’ with the Impossible Loop because the trick itself is just having to ski through the open loop and make it through safely.
The name is also a bit confusing, Impossible Loop, as we will clearly see from Jesper Tjäder that it is possible to pull this trick off. It is also a very difficult structure to name as calling it ‘thing that looks like a loop on a roller coaster’ doesn’t have the same oomph and pizzazz as ‘Impossible Loop’ so I won’t judge the name. Though I would be interested to hear if Jesper Tjäder gave it a separate but similar name in his native Swedish.
Give me 10 years to train for that an I probably still wouldn’t be able to land it. That was nuts.
Jesper Tjäder is a titan in the sport of freestyle skiing but he isn’t exactly a household name to casual sports fans so I thought I’d throw some of his accolades your way. He holds the world record for the longest rail slide on skis, won a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics in Slopestyle, and won a gold medal at the 2023 Aspen X Games in the Knuckle Huck.
Here’s his Knuckle Huck performance:
It’s wild how far the X Games has progressed from the earliest days on ESPN.