The first Greeny Ynvitational went down last week in Laax, Switzerland.

The idea for this event was born sometime last summer after having some beers with friends. Janic Cathomen, a Flims/Laax local who has been skiing in and around the resort since a kid, came up with the idea of hosting an event that brings together a lot of different skiers and styles in a format that showcases skiing as a way to have fun all over the mountains, not only in snowparks. The first idea was to host an event similar to the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational. It soon came clear that this setup requires a lot of resources and spontaneity—two things that make events rather difficult to organize.

Janic has been racing for a long time. Tired of all the contests, he focused more on filming in the backcountry and big mountain. Out of this combination, the idea to set up a video contest originated, and the Greeny Ynvitational was born. Why the name? While skiing with his friends, Janic is often by far the youngest in the group, which makes him the greenhorn. That’s how he earned his nickname, Greeny.
Since filming is always a team effort, Janic wanted the event to happen in teams, men and women mixed. Each team was given the challenge of filming an edit around 2 minutes in length, with four days to film it. The teams where free to spend their time how they wanted. Each evening, the teams gathered for dinner to swap stories from their day, or keep their secrets to themselves—whatever they preferred.

The invited riders travelled to Laax last week and filmed and edited for four days, from Wednesday till Saturday. The results speak for themselves. It’s crazy to see how much creativity and effort there still is in freeskiing and how much love the contenders put into the clips. With a really low snow year and barely any snow off-piste, the rules were opened up a little and the teams were allowed to film up to a third of their edit in the park. No one took advantage of that, and still all the edits are fire!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH ALL THE EDITS AND CAST YOUR VOTE!

The deadline for the edits was on Saturday 28 January at 8:00pm sharp. After dinner and a prizegiving ceremony, the edits were shown at the Riders Hotel where a huge crowd turned out, showing that freeskiing needs more events like this. At this stage, a big shoutout to all the partners making this event happen: LAAX, Downdays and EL TONY Mate.

To also offer something for the skiing community that’s given us all so much, the community also gets their own vote to pick which edit they think is the best. Public voting starts today at 7:00pm CET and lasts for a week, and the most liked edit will get the grand prize. So now it’s up to you to go and vote!