It’s little shock {that a} gold-medal-winning Olympic skier comes from a household that loves the snow, however slopestyle champion Alex Corridor’s mother and pa may adore it greater than most. The pair met on the slopes, Corridor informed Quick Firm, and primarily raised him and his brother on skis. That didn’t essentially imply he’d be good at it. However fortunately, Corridor—who took residence silver final month on the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and gold in Beijing in 2022—is healthier than good.
And that’s a lucky factor, as a result of the amateur-to-professional athlete pipeline is already slim, and most professional careers dry up as athletes transfer into their 30s. Corridor isn’t too positive what his future within the sport will appear like—though at 27, he positively has the potential to point out up on the 2030 Video games within the French Alps.
Like many high achievers, that query of “what’s next?” can really feel pervasive, to not point out daunting. It’s an easy trap to fall into: to start out eager about the subsequent challenge or success after you’ve simply completed the final one.
However Corridor believes there’s one thing that can affect his post-Olympics profession: his hobbies and pursuits exterior of snowboarding.
“I’ve completed a few internships with companies and discover it pretty attention-grabbing,” Corridor stated. “However I believe proper now at this level—the place I’m at in my life now—it’s exhausting to essentially be 100% dedicated to one thing like that. It’s exhausting to check myself doing that.”
“As an individual, you modify quite a bit,” he continued. “And I believe when the time comes the place I’m competing much less or snowboarding much less, I believe I’ll have modified sufficient to the place I’ll have one thing else that I actually need to do for a career or in life. And I’ve loads of hobbies. So I’m positive I’ll by no means run out of hobbies, but it surely simply relies upon professionally, you already know, what is going to come subsequent.”
Along with quite a lot of different sports activities pursuits, Corridor additionally spends his time browsing and exploring video manufacturing.
Although there’s loads of cautionary recommendation on the market in opposition to turning hobbies into a career, there’s additionally proof that doing so will be enormously rewarding.
A 2025 study by the International Journal of Research in Marketing interviewed snowsport instructors in New Zealand, Japan, and Canada who left customary jobs to pursue their hobbies-turned-careers over a 10-year span of time.
Although they encountered loads of challenges, together with monetary insecurity and needing loads of coaching, most respondents reported “experiencing important private progress and achievement.”
Corridor may additionally transition from snowboarding to creating motion movies for manufacturers and sponsors, like many Olympians have—one thing he stated he’d like to “focus somewhat extra on when I’ve somewhat extra time and I don’t need to dedicate a lot of my time to the competing stuff.”
He’s not the one latest Olympian who takes a refreshingly different approach to success. Alysa Liu, who gained gold in girls’s particular person determine skating in Milan, had truly quit the sport to focus on being a normal teen earlier than picking it back up and crushing it final month on the ice.
Corridor was 10 when he discovered he may be good at freestyle snowboarding, regardless of not likely understanding that’s what the game was known as. “We had a trampoline in our yard, so I began doing a little flips and stuff on the trampoline,” Corridor stated. “However after I was 10, I attempted my first flip on skis simply sort of randomly. We constructed somewhat leap off to the facet of a ski run, and there was some contemporary snow . . . so mushy. And I used to be with a few my pals, and I simply sort of randomly tried it and ended up touchdown it inside a few tries. After which my love for the game sort of simply . . . was there.”
It might be that sort of openness to serendipity that defines the subsequent chapter of his story, or of anybody’s after they’ve achieved a excessive quantity of success.
Corridor remains to be going robust almost 20 years later. As for what occurs throughout the 2030 Winter Olympic Video games (and past)—the long run is within the snow.
