Paul de Pourtalès 🇫🇷🇨🇭🇬🇧

Paul de Pourtalès is a new generation freeride skier. Recovering from a serious injury at the age of 18, he understands the importance of longevity for an athlete and decides to build the rest of his career step by step, with a sustainable and thoughtful approach to sport and the mountains.

After a 2025 season marked by several podiums, he joins the 2026 Freeride World Tour with a clear goal: to progress among the best and share his vision of skiing with as many people as possible.

The likely inclusion of freeride in the 2030 Winter Olympics is also a major motivation for his progress and a significant goal. A committed athlete, aspiring engineer, and passionate storyteller, Paul embodies the balance between ambition, creativity, and respect for the mountains.

Ski Snowboard

What is your approach to the mountain?

No doubt it will evolve, because the mountain can be experienced in 1001 different ways. Currently,
I enjoy moving around the most on my skis.

I am fascinated by the historical development of sports related to freeride: from a drought in
California in the 70s and empty pools that summer, bowl skateboarding was born,
a reinvention and reappropriation of a space that had become unused. The same goes for Parkour, where every day
athletes reinvent the urban environment around them, an environment that has become almost
invisible through everyday eyes.

This is the school from which I draw my mountain vision: richness is everywhere. The ski industry has
developed by transforming the mountain to adapt it to the needs of the practitioner. Even
the freeride industry has long idolized perfect conditions, "the dream trip" in Japan
or Alaska. For me, free skiing is not about transforming your environment to suit the skier's desire. Freeride is, for me, the opposite: taking into account the
constraints of the place where you are, and using them to explore the field of possibilities. Where I
find the most pleasure is on the slopes just behind my home, where every year I
rediscover new ways to approach them. The conditions change, of course, and I
progress, which allows me to reinvent each time a mountain I think I know by
heart.

What do you mean by durability in freeride?

It is obviously double! Mine, and that of my sport. When you seek performance,
it’s easy to forget the consequences and I learned that lesson by fracturing a vertebra
during my first adult competition. I understood the importance of progressing gradually,
increasing my comfort zone step by step, driven by discipline in my
physical, technical, and mental preparation.

If I have only one body, we obviously have only one planet, and the parallel is clear. We can’t
just consume the thrill of the mountains without caring about the consequences of our actions on
the environment. Without exaggerating the impact of my approach, it is important for me, on my
scale, to promote a vision of skiing that respects the mountains we move through and aligns with the climate imperatives we face.

Why Lagoped?

A sports career is impossible without partners, but not all athletes are lucky enough to work with brands whose values they share. I am fortunate with Lagoped, not only to support the mission of a sustainable revolution in mountain textiles but also to share their vision. The ptarmigan, a discreet and resilient animal, adapts to its environment without trying to dominate it. This is the vision of the mountain that I share.

The best-off challenger

How do you choose your lines?

In competition or training, I first try to let myself be guided by desire. I take the time to absorb the slope I am looking at (note: on competition days, skiing the slope before the start is forbidden, so the inspection is done from a distance, visually, with binoculars). Several ideas that attract me form in my mind, and then I think about how to best combine them to propose a smooth, clean, and creative ski. I believe a freeride line is successful when, from the outside, you say, "wow, it looks like the terrain was made for this." Finding the obvious in the randomness of nature, a three-way dance between the mountain, gravity, and me. I feel a bit like Numerobis when I try to explain it, but that's really what it is!!