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A lot of you are wondering how the hell I can choose going to World Skiing Invitational in Whistler, over my home event, Jon Olsson Invitational in Åre, Sweden. The arguments are great, Jon’s trademark perfect jump building, the hometown feeling, etc, and if this was any other year I would have chosen to go to JOI without any hesitation. This time it’s different though, because this little thing called the AFP ranking came along and made the choice harder.
For those of you who don’t know, The Association of Freeskiing Professionals is a system not far away from FIS, that has the objective to rank and classify both riders and events. An event can get a status ranging from bronze to platinum, basically telling sponsors and athletes how important the competition in question is. Depending on the status of the comp, the athletes in it get AFP points for how well they score in it, and move up and down in the ranking systems.
Obviously there is no way of telling who is the best skier and so on, but for people outside of our sport, such as corporate sponsors and mainstream media, having an official looking ranking system is obviously very convenient. With the JOI only having one discipline, and an AFP gold standard, it only makes sense for me, and several other athletes, to go to the platinum-ranked WSI event. There I can do two disciplines and score a lot higher in the final ranking, where I am currently ranked 3rd (big air), 11th (slopestyle), and 9th (overall).
It’s a huge bummer the events coincide because trust me, I want to compete in front of the home crowd more than anything, but with sponsor contracts being renewed, this is the smartest choice for me business-wise. It’s not a long career and you gotta make the smart moves!
<---write it like this! 
