Photo: Lorenz Richard//Red Bull Content Pool
Watching some of the world’s best freeskiers run through your everyday park isn’t all that far off from watching circus performers jump, fly, and twist their way through a performance. Most parks, however, don’t have actual swings for trapeze artists or giant inflatable balls for jibs. Still, there are at least enough similarities between the skill sets that Swiss skier Fabian Bösch saw a connection. While at the gym one day, Bösch was training with an exercise ball when the idea of building a circus over a park course hit him. And as a Red Bull athlete, these sorts of ideas aren’t just things to chuckle about and brush off. That’s the kind of idea you call a team manager about and get the proverbial ball rolling (or bouncing).
Just like that, Circus Bösch was set in motion with plans to give some everyday park features a circus-like twist on Switzerland’s Schilthorn Mountain. The end result included a trapeze, balloons, bouncy balls, a slackline, and an inverted rail among other features. Bösch worked with Helvepark, a Swiss company that specializes in designing parks and engineering and building features. With such a novel idea though, nobody knew exactly how to execute some of the features that were being dreamed up, so the team went with a combination of experience and “gut feelings” to make it all a reality, Bösch admits.
Once it was all said and done, Bösch was left with the most challenging part of it all: executing the tricks he’d been thinking up on certain park features that aren’t even really park features, like flipping off of a kicker and onto a swing. This isn’t the kind of park run you pull off in one fell swoop, but the end production made Bösch’s vision a seamless, fun ride through an iconic location in the Swiss Alps.
“‘Circus Bösch’ was about as challenging as taking part in a big competition,” he says. “What really got to me were the little falls – approaching an obstacle 30 times and failing 30 times. In a contest, I’m alone, so when I mess up it only bothers me. With ‘Circus Bösch’, there are 20 people on the mountain. You don’t want to disappoint anyone.”
