Slovenia’s best freestyle skier Flisar retiring

Ljubljana – Slovenian freestyle skier Filip Flisar, the 2015 world champion in ski cross, has announced that he is ending his professional career, with the decision coming after he failed to appear at the start of the new World Cup season due to health issues.

As the new season was starting in mid-December in Arosa, Switzerland, Flisar said he would not be attending as he complained of high temperature, while adding that he did not feel ready for the competition due to the lack of training on the snow.

Announcing the decision at a press conference on Wednesday, Flisar said that it had not come overnight, as he had been thinking about retiring already over the summer.

“I wanted to appear in one more race. But the situation is what it is, ‘corona’ is not letting go, competitions are being cancelled, so the time has come for me to announce that I’m retiring as an athlete.”

The 33-year-old from Maribor, who started his career as Alpine skier, achieved his best career result in 2015 with the gold medal in ski cross at the world championships in Austria’s Kreischberg.

He also won silver in the same discipline at the Winter X Games in Aspen, US in 2012, and has rung up seven wins and 16 podium finishes in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup.

“Time has come for other things, as there are many that I like to do,” he said, adding that he did not see himself as a coach, while he wanted to stay in skiing.

Flisar is widely known in Slovenia as an adrenaline junkie who has also been active in other extreme sports, including skateboarding and downhill mountain biking.

He is also known for his characteristic moustache – long and often curled upward at the sides, his eccentric behaviour and his sense of humour.

Flisar said he would stay in touch with sponsors and take part in certain projects as he was still young and healthy enough for “mischief and madness”, and he still liked to be in front of cameras.

To conclude the press conference, he said he would organise an entertaining official event to mark the end of is career once the Covid-19 epidemic ended.

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