The last time we caught up with Manu was a few years back, just after her first concussion and before the release of her splitboard movie “Through Darkness”. “I had another concussion in between that and now –  not a bad one and I feel fine again, but I’m a bit cautious…”, Manuela thinks back about the incident and continues, “Yesterday we were watching women’s big air finals, and I was like ‘Oh my god, that’s so impressive,’ but then there were one or two crashes where I was like ‘Oooh, you’re going to be feeling that for a while!’”

“I still want to be riding when I’m 80 years old, and that’s the fundamental thing with freeriding anyway, how much do you risk?”

The Freeride World Tour is known for its unpredictable, challenging conditions and terrain that’s technical enough without throwing backflips into the mix. However, keen to keep on pushing women’s freeriding, Manuela and the other ladies on the tour know that they need to implement more tricks into their runs. “I guess we can only achieve that if we train different and harder with methods from other parts of the sports, but with my state of body and age it might not be the best idea to train on airbags and push super hard because I just can’t handle all the falls. If I had one bigger fall, I would feel it for at least one week after.”

Thinking about her future, Manuela is reluctant about the idea. Even if backflips are part of her arsenal, they aren’t to the extent that she’d be confident enough to pull them off on a run in the tour, “There’s a lot of pressure involved and then the question is if I can actually handle it.” Manuela continues, “I still want to be riding when I’m 80 years old, and that’s the fundamental thing with freeriding anyway, how much do you risk? Do you drop into that super nice steep powder face or not, and if you do drop in, is there a clean outrun or not? We can ride more radical, jump higher, be better in the air with grabs. We don’t necessarily need to pull double backflips in there.”

Despite a tough few years, Manuela is Manuela’s enthusiasm for riding is infectious. She turns her attention to how we can instil this in the next generation of riders – specifically women riders. She explains, “We need more young ones coming into the sport and they need to know much more than I did. I mean, I survived in this sport because of heaps of luck, not knowledge, and that’s something we have to change.”

“I survived in this sport because of heaps of luck, not knowledge, and that’s something we have to change”

She continues, “Outdoor sports add so much to the quality of life, and sometimes when I meet people from big cities, people aren’t even aware of this quality of life and the fun that comes with it. When people don’t know, they can’t experience it, and I feel like it’s a world and a way of living that we have to share.”

Representation, clearly, is an area that the outdoors industry, in general, has a long way still to go. “It’s a vicious circle,” she says. “Only seven per cent of all international sports sponsorship money goes towards women. I mean, seven per cent! This number, it’s just so — I can’t even…”

“As women, we get very little support because we are small numbers, but we are small numbers because no one can see us, we don’t have fitting gear or sponsor support, and the only way we can change that is for various sides to take action,” she continues.

“The number of women in sports is rising but it’s still too low”

“We as athletes have to see that our job isn’t just to be a good athlete but also to inspire people to do sports, to tell them to take care of their bodies and to lobby that sports are an important and a huge improvement of the quality of life for everyone and unfortunately, women do not have the same attachment to that. The number of women in sports is rising but it’s still too low.”

But, it isn’t just up to the athletes to inspire more females to get involved in male-dominated sports like snowboarding, equal prize money, representation and exposure are a few of the key issues that need to be addressed too.

 

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A few years back, the FWT took the step to payout equal prize money for men and women, but this isn’t the only issue Manuela and the other women on the Tour have been facing. Manuela explains that, “I think the most important thing that would really improve women’s freeriding would be to have a bigger field. We have too few starting positions to really make improvements. With the new format, we only have three runs before the cut, and half of the field is not progressing into the finals or next year’s competition. With such a small field, the dynamic tends to be safe runs and not much risk. You can still score quite high playing it safe because everyone who risks it and crashes is definitely out and because we only have 6 starting positions, it doesn’t pay off to actually charge.”

She continues, “The problem in the Freeride World Tour is that the faces can only handle a certain amount of competitors and we can only handle a certain length of the live stream so we can’t really be more than 50 something competitors.”

“I think the most important thing that would really improve women’s freeriding would be to have a bigger field. We have too few starting positions to really make improvements”

The numbers for each category all steam back to the original concept, the concept the unequal prize money was built on too, “the number of snowboard women traces back to the number of the relative numbers compared to each other in each field. If there are only five snowboard ladies signing up and 55 ski men, they compare these numbers and sign spots to each category based on the numbers of people competing.”

The FWT field is determined proportionally to the number of licensees per category on the Juniors and Qualifiers levels and if they would use those exact numbers, they would have only 3 snowboard women because of the lack of licenses.

Manuela goes on to explain how the tour is working on changing this. “They’re trying to adjust but it’s just a vicious circle for us. We need more starting spots, we need more relevance, more competitors, more women doing the sport. The Freeride World Tour is working to launch a program to empower female skiers and snowboarders to connect and inspire each other to go up the mountain more, which could raise the number of competitors.”

 

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As someone who’s been part of the snowboard industry for a long time now, Manuela’s witnessed how much things have changed. “There is still some kind of macho culture in the park and when I was young, I didn’t feel confident enough to hit the park, but that has definitely got a bit better. In general, most 15-year-olds are aware of gender problems now. Sport is the real representation of society, and I always feel like it tends to be the first battling grounds for societal change.”

The latest episode of the web series focuses on glacier safety. “So many people are up on the glaciers in the autumn, shredding somewhere and totally ignoring that there are crevasses. All these safety techniques [featured in the latest episode] are super helpful if somebody falls down a crevasse and you need to help them out.”

“There is a lot of snow moving, there can be avalanches, spontaneous releases, and people still go crazy, just hunting to take that perfect picture they saw on social media”

It isn’t just about having the knowledge, but also having a good crew with you, as Manuela explains, “In a way, freeriding is a group sport. You want to look after each other so you want to be out with people who know how to use their gear and who can throw rescue missions if necessary. Things are a lot easier when you’re at least three people, better four to five.”

 

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When the first snow falls, a lot of people head out to the glaciers for those first powder turns. In Tirol, this has really become an issue. “We’ve got people falling into crevasses because they just don’t realise that they exist. And then we’ve got all these media phenomena and edits of people playing with the glacier ice because it’s so beautiful, but it’s also dangerous because it’s constantly moving, and you never know what’s underneath and also, it’s all connected to climate change.

Seeing photos of how much glaciers have melted in the last fifty, even in the last twenty years, is devastating, and something needs to change. But implementing sustainable change isn’t an easy task, as Manuela explains, “In order to change something it has to be fun; it has to be positive. Long term it won’t change anything if the change is forced on us.”