Skiing
Lucas Braathen: "Steve Jobs is my role model"
Meet 22-year-old Lucas Braathen, a slalom and giant slalom racer who breaks all the rules without going off course.
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen has never lived an ordinary life. A natural born world traveller, the 22-year-old Norwegian skiing star had already moved home 21 times by his 22nd year. Making his World Cup debut four years ago, Braathen has since won five races, even breaking a world record on 2022 when he moved up from 29th place after the first run of the competition to win the first place prize.
When the ski season is over, Braathen doesn’t rest up. With family in both Norway and Brazil he packs his bags and travels the world, visiting cities, visiting family and friends, going to exhibitions, designing fashion, DJing parties and more. His two worlds – the big wide world and the tight-knit ski world – represent no contradiction to him. On the contrary. Lucas Braathen does everything to make that small world just a little bit bigger, and, more importantly, less narrow-minded.
THE RED BULLETIN: Lucas, what three words best describe your childhood growing up in Norway?
LUCAS BRAATHEN: Change. Progress. Diversity.
Why change?
Because we moved so many times. I never felt at home anywhere – not with one group of friends, not in one city, not in a single school. Almost as soon as we settled somewhere, we moved again. My parents separated when I was three. At first, I lived with my mother in Brazil, but then my father got custody in Norway. I started out playing football and wanted to be like Ronaldinho [Gaúcho]. Then my father introduced me to skiing. We travelled and learnt new languages, got to know new places, new cultures.
Lucas Braathen is happy about 3rd place at the slalom in Kitzbühel.
© Samo Vidic / Red Bull Content Pool
It must have been enriching, of course, to have had so many different influences as a child but was it also hard?
I hated it. Now I’m extremely grateful for it. It made me the person I am today. But back then I thought it was horrible. I was completely insecure as a child. Wherever we went, I was always the new one, the odd one out, the outsider. I tried to fit in. I would adopt the local accent, imitate their behaviour, until I got to secondary school. Then I understood there was no point in me trying to adapt over and over again. I had changed my personality, my accent, my interests so often only to then go on and lose them. So I stopped, and learnt to be myself instead.
For the first time, I was not the outsider - everyone was an outsider. Everyone spoke some weird dialect that the others didn't know. Suddenly it was cool to be different.
You were a child star and were already considered a great talent at your ski school in Oslo. But when your father was teaching you how to ski, you weren’t necessarily thinking of becoming a champion, were you?
Not at all. My father was a so-called ski bum, one of those people who moved from ski resort to ski resort whenever he got a new job. He never thought I could become a professional skier. It was all about enjoyment for him. He wanted to be on the snow with me and travel the world. He wanted to introduce me to the art of skiing. At first I didn’t think it was cool at all and I tried to come up with all sorts of excuses. I argued that I wasn’t made for the cold, being half-Brazilian.
So why did you become an alpine skier?
It wasn’t so much about the sport itself. One day when I was about eight, I saw a group of ski-racers on the mountain. I was impressed by how fast they were going. I told my father I wanted to do that too. By the end of that winter, I loved training so much that I didn’t want to stop. So my father started looking for a way to get me into a group training on the glacier that summer. It brought together Norwegians form all different parts of the country. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the outsider. They were all outsiders. Everyone spoke in some strange dialect others didn’t know. Suddenly it was cool to be different. That’s why I fell in love with this sport. Not because of the blue and red gates.
Tell us more…
The following autumn, my father took me to the Hintertux Glacier. There were people from Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the US. I thought it was so cool. That was when I stopped playing football. I did dream of becoming the best in the world, but I wanted to be the best in the world in a sport that allowed me to be myself.
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Lucas Braathen was 18 years old when one of the greats of his sport first became aware of him. After his second-place finish in the Norwegian national championships, four-time Olympic champion Kjetil André Aamodt advised the association to get this young talent straight onto the national team. Just six months later, in December 2018, Braathen made his World Cup debut in Val-d’Isère and skied his way straight into the points.
His breakthrough came just over a year after that. In January 2020, with a start number of 34, he finished the first run of the Kitzbühel slalom in the lead, though dropped back to fourth after the second. Journalists in the finish area asked him, “Who is Lucas Braathen?” Standing next to compatriot and high-flying slalom-racer Henrik Kristoffersen, he replied, “I’m the next big thing!”
Braathen is now one of the best in the world at both slalom and giant slalom. Even the overall World Cup could be in his sights at some point. In his first and so far only run in a speed event, he came seventh in the Super-G at Beaver Creek at the beginning of this season.
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What is your greatest strength as a skier?
My explosiveness. It’s genetic. I just have a lot of “fast” muscle fibres, which we know from lab and strength tests. With fast, explosive momentum, however, you run the risk of not being able to control the force you generate. In other words, I accelerate very quickly, but that threatens my stability. My finding this balance between quick and controlled momentum is probably my greatest achievement as a skier in the last two years.
And your greatest weakness?
My temperament. If I don’t achieve something I really want to, I can be very destructive. It’s something I work on every day. I meditate, both with an instructor and alone. I’m not the kind of guy who needs a mental coach for that moment at the start. I don’t have to control what I think, because one of my biggest strengths is my mindset on race day. But I have to work on the everyday things. That’s why I meditate. In the morning, usually, before I leave the house. I need that moment to myself to be in the right state for the things to come.
You say your main inspiration comes from beyond the world of skiing. Where exactly?
My friends are my inspiration. They are artists, musicians, photographers. They study economics or work jobs. They are all so different. I learn so much from them. Sometimes people ask me who my role model is. I say Steve Jobs. And they say, “No, no. Who is your role model in skiing?” But I’m serious. Steve Jobs is my role model because he resisted the strict rules that held sway in the conservative computer industry of the time. He broke out and just went with what he believed in.
But if you had to name a sports star role model, who would it be?
Dennis Rodman. For me, Rodman is the epitome of the sports star who does things his own way. He played for the biggest basketball team in the world and had the eyes of the world trained on him but he didn’t care. After all, he was the one that had to make the rebounds, not the journalists, not the coach, not the club. It’s like that for me too. Family members, coaches, teachers, schools, associations... They all have an opinion. And you have to listen to them all. But you have to decide for yourself. Because you’re the only one up there at the start. Only you can win the race.
In Wengen 2022 Lucas went from 29th place in the first run to 1st place
© GEPA images
Do you think that it would be good for sport in general to think outside the box and draw inspiration from people and influences from other worlds?
When someone asks me what my goals are, they’re usually expecting me to say a certain number of medals and podium finishes, some statistic or other. It’s true. I do have goals. But only one of them is about results. My second goal is to give something back to the sport. It lets me live this life that I love so much.
What is your third goal?
Possibly my biggest. I want to change this sport by being myself. I don’t want to have to rein in my personality just because the system expects me to. Or the skiing public does. Or the Norwegian press. I don’t want to be dictated to regarding how I have to behave as a skier. And I hope that way I can be an inspiration to someone. A boy who wants to paint his nails might finally dare do it, just like I do. A boy who wants to dress in a feminine way may actually dare to do so. Or he takes a certain political stance, even if the people around him don’t share his opinion. The sports world is often very conservative, strict, confining. I’m not strong enough to rid us of these shackles on my own, but if I can serve as something of an inspiration to make the sport a little more tolerant, colourful and diverse, that would make me much happier than any sporting victory.
How do you deal with ski fans that dislike your appearance?
Oh, there are lots of them. “You’re gay!” “That’s so gay!” “Why are you so feminine?” “You should focus on skiing, not your clothes!” My social media accounts are full of that kind of comment. But they come from people who don’t know me personally. They have no idea who I really am, so they can’t offend me either. Secretly, I even enjoy reactions like theirs. They are proof that I trigger something in those people. I light a spark.
You triggered a particularly emotional reaction when you badmouthed the Scandinavian “Janteloven” [Law of Jante] code of conduct in an interview. What exactly was that all about?
In Norway, Janteloven is a kind of unwritten law, a set of social rules. For example, it is considered very indecent to think of yourself as more important or somehow better than others. I said it was the most destructive thing I’d ever heard, the greatest weakness in Norwegian culture. It slows progress in our country.
Does it help your sporting performance if you say controversial things? Or do your statements sometimes get in the way of success?
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mind a bad reaction. I am a person who has his good and bad days. I’m vulnerable in the same way we all are. If someone writes to me that I dress “so gay” I should kill myself, that does get me thinking. Not that I get too many nasty messages like that, but they have been getting more numerous since I’ve learnt to be truer to myself in public.
This season is the first when you’ve been in the top seven starters in both the slalom and giant slalom.
I remember the season opener in Sölden well. I felt under so much pressure. I felt like everyone was looking at me, many of them negatively. I want to show these people they are wrong, that dressing and expressing myself the way I want doesn’t make me a worse skier. If I manage to be myself and still succeed then I can change this sport.
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It’s probably a coincidence, but Norway is a land of skiing double acts. In the same way we had Kjetil André Aamodt and Lasse Kjus and then Aksel Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud, Lucas Braathen isn’t a solo act either. His skiing other half is called Atle Lie McGrath and he too was born in April 2000. And, again, he too has one non-Norwegian parent. (McGrath’s father is American).
But that’s where the similarities end. Braathen is the eccentric, McGrath the introvert. Braathen does things his way, McGrath fits in. If the two of them met under normal circumstances, they would probably never have become friends. They met at a ski club in Oslo when they were eleven and have made their way to the top of the world together ever since. Braathen was always a little ahead: World Cup debut, first podium finish, first victory. But McGrath always caught up.
They even went through the darkest hour of their careers together. In 2021, they both crashed out during the giant slalom at Adelboden and suffered knee injuries. Both their seasons were over. Together they fought their way through rehab and back, into sport and the diverse life that goes with it.
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Let’s talk about your love of art. Do you have a favourite artwork?
I love the art by my friends, such as New York-based Bernhard Bratsberg, who creates great mixed-media paintings. I didn’t grow up in a particularly creative environment. I only discovered my love for painting, art and music via them. To be able to witness how they create a work that will eventually hang in someone’s home, an exhibition or gallery touches me deeply. It’s exhilarating finding out what brought them to create their work.
Is skiing a form of art?
If you were to ask other World Cup ski racers, most would probably answer, “I’m in sports, not art”. I see things differently. The path that leads me to victory is, in my eyes, a work of art of sorts. Being at the top of the leader board at the end of a long race day is pure joy for me because what got me there is my childhood, the upbringing I had. My cultural background. My friends. My parents. The schools I went to. The work I put in. Yes, the end result is the painting everyone looks at but behind that there is a long journey made up of many small brush strokes.
Skiing is just one of many sources of happiness for me.
How does your living out your creativity away from the sport in your spare time help your skiing?
For me, skiing is just one of many sources of happiness, and I definitely want to maintain the other sources too. Suppose skiing had been all I had in my life when I was seriously injured two years ago... I would have been miserable. But in actual fact, I had all these other things I was interested in.
There are no leader boards in fashion.
Indeed! Fashion is subjective. Skiing is about hundredths of seconds, podiums, winning. I look for the polar opposite in the other worlds within my life. I want to be able to express myself the way I like there. I need that to be a good skier. When the ski season is over, I have to be able to get as far away from my life as a professional sportsman as quickly as possible in order to come back motivated later. Every day I spend with friends who have nothing to do with skiing makes me a better skier. Every day I can be myself, dress femininely, surf, skate or go to an exhibition is an experience that also helps me in my sport.
