Freeski slopestyle star Tjäder wakes up in game show

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The Swedes skills are pushed to the limits. Will he survive to ride another day?

Jesper Tjäder has treated us to some of freeskiing’s most mind-blowing videos like “Unrailistic” and “Unrailistic 2.0” with his latest project seeing him wake up to find himself challenged in a dreamlike and quirky Japanese game show. The Swede has earned a reputation as one of the best creative freeskiers with a 2014 FIS World Cup slopestyle title and two Winter Olympic appearances to his name.

The 26-year-old has millions of views on YouTube for the likes of “Unrailistic”, “Jesper Tjäder Forest” and “Skiing on Copenhill” as well as wowing funs at Bad Gastein during the Red Bull Playstreets events.

For this latest project, Tjäder wakes to find himself a contestant on a Japanese extreme challenge game show, with a crazy host imparting tricks at the spin a wheel. Set in what looks like a frozen underground bunker, the obstacles and tricks are out of this world.

Whether you grew up in the 1990s watching hours of TV like Jesper or not, you are likely to have stumbled over the frenetic Japanese game show phenomenon.

The idea behind this quirky and somewhat surreal project emerged from his reoccurring dreams about skiing in one of these madcap shows, so he started to sketch potential features and challenges.

He revealed: “At the level I’m at within freeskiing, it’s usually really scary to try new stuff but in a game show I imagined it’s all about the fun part of skiing. We managed to come very close to my dreams. At one point, I felt like I was actually in a game show.”

Tjäder didn’t just stop there, he wanted a never-done-before trick and that was behind the introduction of a 24-metre (78 feet) long triple elbow “spider rail”.

The Östersund native added: “Failing a large number of attempts (60 times) before you nail a trick is not new to me. It’s just part of the process. But I would have preferred days and not hours on the spider rail.”