I had crashes when I was small and Gumby-like that would have killed me now. I would just fly off jumps and go 40 or 50 meters when I was 6 years old - break skis, smash my goggles and get a bloody nose and go crawl inside for a little while and then come back out and ski more in the afternoon.

Some people say I make mistakes. I just say that this is the secret of enjoying life. I hate monotony. Why don't they leave me freedom of choice? People want to impose choices which aren't necessarily mine. That's the mistake people make.

I went through a period at boarding school when my coaches wanted me to switch to snowboarding because they thought I was no good at skiing. I was too skinny. I had terrible technique. They were saying I should be a snowboarder, and luckily, I resisted.

Obviously, you always want to win, but you want to win by skiing a race that you're proud of and you feel like you really challenged yourself and left it all out there.

That feeling is the same whether you're on either side of the hundredths. Obviously, it's great to win the world championship, but if you put down that kind of skiing, it's awesome either way.

I still love racing and the challenge of it, but at some point, you get to a place where you're perfectly happy moving on and doing other stuff.

I would say most of my style is driven by functionality and comfort.