Smits is further proof that you need to be brought up around mountains (or even loads of a snow) to become a superb snowboarder. Smits grew up in Westmalle, Belgium, thus being a fridge kid who learned to ride on dry slopes and indoors before actually shredding real snow in Gerlos, Austria, for the first time in 1999.
Today, he is one of the best contest riders in the world, taking the first-ever World Cup win for a Belgian snowboarder in 2012 at Antwerp, clinching silver in the big-air contest at the 2009 and 2011 FIS World Championships, and also earning the first ever slopestyle World Championships title in 2011, too. Mountains? Snow? Chairlifts? Who needs them? Not Seppe.