Favourites: Ben Kilner
Finding out the all important what, where, when, who and why from the UK pro snowboarder.
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After getting to the semi-finals in the halfpipe at the Vancouver Winter Olympics earlier this year, Ben Kilner has established himself as one of the UK’s best competitive snowboarders.
With the new snow season achingly close, HUCK caught up with the 22-year-old from Banchory, Scotland in between his pre-season training sessions for the TTR World Tour to find out what revs his engine.
What?
My iPhone. It’s got to the point now that apps provide games, navigation, music, photos, film – everything’s absolutely brilliant! If I go out training on my road bike then I will launch an app that logs my heart rate, my distance and average speed. I use it for pretty much everything. [I love] Angry Birds, also Space Invaders and Fruit Ninja too.
Where?
Location-wise it would be Mammoth Mountain [in California]. That’s the most reliable place to go snowboarding out of all the places in the world. The park is always good. In a situation though, it would be stood just about to drop into a nice big jump. I had a photo shoot for Nike 6.0 in Umeå in Sweden. It was brilliant as the jump was closed down and we had skidoos so we were up and down as fast as a yo-yo. We managed to get a good 20 hits on the jump before our legs finally gave up. When you get the chance to do that, it’s absolutely brilliant.
When?
Spring is my favourite time of year. The snow starts to get soft and the sun comes out that bit more. That’s the best time if you are away – hopefully in a place like California. That’s the part of the season I most look forward to as that’s when you can start learning some new stuff. It would be a good session with my friends on a medium-sized jump. That would be an ideal day for me. When you are learning new stuff, you get such a good feeling out of it. This year, I’d like to be around Mammoth Mountain at that time.
Who?
Bruce Lee. I liked the way he could defeat 20 people in one room [laughs]. At the time when I was a kid, it was believable but obviously now it’s a bit far-fetched, but I still love him for it. He was someone who I looked up to when I was a little kid. My dad was into his martial arts when he was younger and so I got into it at a really young age - I was six. He moved onto MMA and that’s when I got into snowboarding. I left that aside but I do still occasionally do a class as my dad runs one, and he takes me to cage fights all over the UK.
Why?
The weather. A sunny day or a Red Bull in the morning motivates me. Or getting a bunch of friends together gets me all fired up to go for it. It’s odd but if one of your friends lands an amazing trick then that really motivates you to do something. It works in a strange way because you are happy for them but you also want to go and do something good as well. You don’t want to beat them in some sort of angry way, just do something so they’ll be happy for you too.
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