Considering this last answer, can you understand why some people would compare your life as a professional snowboarder to the Glamorous Life of a rockstar?
Jody: To tell you the truth, I think we are way tougher than those lame rockstars. Sure we also have to travel a lot and sometimes move from one hotelroom to the next, but there is so much more to being a professional rider. For example: we often suffer from serious injuries but are always going strong, even though we usually don’t have a clue where we are going to end up for the night...
You seem to have a thing with Sweden. Talking to some of your homies from The Hague, we came across this pretty funny anecdote about you totally out of the blue giving directions to some tourists in fluent Swedish. What’s that all about?
Jody: Well, when I was three years old my parents divorced so I moved to Sweden with my mom and brother. After I had lived there for ten years and moved back to Holland, Swedish was a walk in the park for me. This tourist never knew what hit them and neither did my friends for that matter! Good times...
Finally: is there life after snowboarding?
Jody: In any case I hope it’s a healthy life! I actually haven’t made any future plans yet. At the moment I just want to fully focus on riding and the Olympics. You never know what is going to happen, for all I know I could be spinning the records. We’ll just have to see.
Can you say that in Swedish?
Jody: Vem som läser detta är bäng i huvedet!
As a snowboarder you have to perform well at any given time all over the world to compete with the best and improve your ranking
Best Results
1st Dutch Championships
Halfpipe 1999-2000,
2003-2004, 2004-2005
2nd Dutch Championships
Halfpipe 2002-2003
1st Mountain Madness
Boarder Cross 2000
3rd Mountain Madness
Big Jump 2001
4th European Open
Nauders/Austria Halfpipe 2001
6th Austrian Open
Halfpipe 2001
13th Red Bull Big Jump
Sweden 2002
My FIS Code is 1404953. Check out my latest results, FIS Points and World Cup Standings at
my FIS-personal page
Being a professional snowboarder means snowboarding actually is your job. Can you tell us what the job requirements are?
Jody: Well, it mostly requires a lot of flexibility, stamina and probably a bit of talent. As a snowboarder you have to perform well at any given time all over the world to compete with the best and improve your ranking. This means I have to travel a lot between continents and time zones, which can be quite exhausting. Fortunately travelling also means getting to see a lot of beautiful countries and meet with different people. This season for instance I will leave for the Protest Persian Powder, probably the first all-snowboard roadtrip to Iran. This trip is fully dedicated to finding out what snowboarding in the mostly unknown resorts of the Middle East is all about. From Iran it’s straight to Korea for a World Cup Halfpipe Competition in the Sungwoo Resort, followed by a short stopover in Hawaii in order to head on to Lake Placid USA and enter in a big Halfpipe Contest. From there I fly to New York for a two-day cultural visit and finally finish my world tour with an event in Sweden.