Finnish double Winter Olympic medallist and topflight Swatch TTR World Snowboard Championship competitor Peetu Piiroinen is a stalwart of the competitive snowboarding world, having been competing in, and sometimes winning, prestigious international events since 2005. His experience goes back even further – he started out as a kid back in 1998, and has been working flat out ever since to get to the very top of his game. He is rated highly in Slopestyle, Halfpipe and Big Air events, so his reputation as one of snowboarding’s true all-rounders is thoroughly deserved.

In this video from Onboard Mag, we enjoy a rare opportunity to listen in as Peetu looks back at over a decade on the slopes, during the relatively relaxed months between competition seasons. Usually the quiet and mysterious type, he opens up about his thoughts on how he has been able to combine consistency and longevity to such a remarkable degree, and his hopes and expectations for how the sport might progress. He has a super chilled take on things, and this is a measured, thoughtful, and unusually candid insight into what life is really like as a long-standing snowboarding pro. Brilliantly, we also get to see how Peetu chooses to snowboard during downtime, away from the inevitable limitations inherent in any competitive sport.

So watch, listen and learn, or read the subtitles and learn if your Finnish language skills are a little rusty. But then, you could just sit back and marvel at the awesome feats of snowboarding excellence on display, not to mention the sheer splendour of some of Europe’s toughest slopes, and all those miles of crisp, white powder.