Erika Vikander's dream of making a living riding a snowboard moved a lot closer to a reality last weekend. The 19-year-old Salt Lake resident won the first stop of the Gatorade Free Flow Tour in Mountain High, Calif., in the slopestyle event on Jan. 17. Her season gets better this weekend when she heads home to compete in the second stop at Brighton Ski Resort on Saturday. "I'm so excited," she said, "that this stop is at Brighton. It's a fun place to have it." She isn't sure how the resort will build the slopestyle course, but she is familiar with the resort as she's skied it for years growing up in the Park City and Salt Lake City area. "I have lived here so long that I'm pretty confident about being able to go in there and wing it," said Vikander of Brighton. "It's a chill little resort, smaller and low key. Sometimes just riding around Park City feels like you're in a competition." Vikander moved to Utah as a high school freshman and attended Park City High for two years. She was spending so much time on a snowboard, she transferred to the Winter Sports School at the Utah Olympic Park for her final two years of high school.
"It was such a great experience," she said. "If I hadn't been able to go there, I'm not sure where I would be. They give us the winter off to compete, and we go to school all summer. With one or two people in a class, there is a lot of one-on-one help." Her father lives here while her mom resides in Laguna Beach, which for Vikander is the best of both worlds. "I love to play in the ocean, and I love to snowboard," she said. Her success is helping her realize her goal of turning snowboarding into a profession. "Ideally I want to set myself up to get into the Dew Tour," she said. The Gatorade Free Flow Tour's top athletes get to compete in the Dew Tour the following year. "Then I'd like to qualify for the X Games (which are this weekend in Apsen, Colo.). And ultimately, it would be awesome to get slopestyle snowboarding into the Olympics and make an Olympic team." Many believe that it's just a matter of time before slopestlye is added to the Games, as it is growing in popularity among athletes and fans.
"I think it is very feasible," she said. "It's the next wave."