Martin Cernik, the Czech Republic’s best freestyle snowboarder, knows how to translate craziness and take some things a bit more easily.
It’s difficult to conceive of a better debut in the international snowboarding scene than Martin Cernik’s. It was at the 1997 ISF Continental Open in Arosa, Switzerland. Martin was 21 at the time, not a big name, and he won the competition. “I beat the Olympic champion on his home turf. That was cool”, Martin recalls. “But the prize money went toward fuel, housing and the entry fee. That wasn’t so cool.”Martin’s career was five years old then. And it had developed under a bit more challenging circumstances than his colleagues from Western countries. At 16, Martin bought his first board, which was much too heavy, and a pair of ski boots that were much too old. “There wasn’t much to choose from. Snowboarding was just a baby in the Czech Republic.” One could say that snowparks already existed in the Czech Republic back then, but they were exclusively in the imagination of the first snowboarders.
Even back then, Martin had a motto: “Life is a backpack. Don’t make it too heavy for yourself.” And so he used the hill behind his parents’ house as a jump. And when that got too boring, he used downhill moguls for his jumps. “That was enough, because right from the start I was crazy about the sport.”
All-round Freestyler...
Since his breakthrough in Arosa, Martin has been good at translating his craziness into successes. There hasn’t been a season since then when he didn’t have at least three podium finishes and one victory, except in 2001–but he made up for it by taking second that year in the ISF World Championship in the halfpipe.
Moreover, Martin is successful in all of the freestyle disciplines. In addition to the halfpipe, he’s won in slopestyle (like at the 2000 Planet X-Games), and his love for Big Air was made clear, among other things, by his 2002 Red Bull Air Raid victory.
There’ve been other success experiences–second place at Lords of the Boards in 2001 and 2002 as well as at the 2001 Air & Style.
Half of Martin’s time is spent jumping into podium finishes at contests. He dedicates the other half to freeriding. “Contests are important,” Martin says, “but the most important thing is to stay creative.” That’s why he went heliboarding in the Spanish Pyrenees last winter, and why he’s also left tracks in Alaska. “I definitely rode the best lines in my life there.”
...and Piano Man
Martin lives his private life much like he goes about his sport. On the one hand, he needs action and sometimes likes to hang out with friends a bit too long. His girlfriend is a DJ, which even gets him to a rave from time to time. “But I prefer,” he says, “the fresh air and to have fewer people around.”Occasionally the 29-year-old will crawl into a book–like Paolo Coelhos Alchimist–and look for ways “to take away something positive from every difficult situation.” And Martin finds energy “when I listen to my father and my brother play guitar.” Or when he sits at the piano himself, which he’s played for 17 years. His favourite song on the piano: Riders on the Storm from The Doors.