The men behind Banger Park

'Alex walked into my office,' recalls the man from Scharnitz. 'He told me he wanted to buy the lift and the slope.' Although Gaugg had long been investing more in the lift than he was earning from it, often spending his entire holiday in the lift hut handing out hangers, selling was not an option for him. 'The lift is an heirloom from my father. There's even a huge, painted picture of me at the valley station, which he had put there during my wildest snowboarding days.' You don't just give away something like that. The two agreed on a lease, though Gaugg was skeptical. Pankiewicz's plan to build a summer training center for snowboarders on airbags sounded exciting, but also very ambitious. 'How is that going to work?' I asked him. 'That shouldn't be your concern,' came the reply.

Pankiewicz had a vision. Born in Wrocław, the 33-year-old had started doing artistic gymnastics at an early age. 'I pursued my career very professionally until I was 18, participating in many national and international competitions.' His training, based on the Soviet method, was extremely demanding but never dangerous. 'We learned every movement, every jump step by step, always secured by trampolines, nets, and straps that could pull us up before we hit the ground.' Even at the highest level, gymnastics is not dangerous because the athletes only perform their tricks on the hard mat floor when they are truly confident.

At the age of 18, Pankiewicz switched to snowboarding and tried to utilize his gymnastics skills on the snowboard to become successful there. However, the very first training sessions brought a certain disillusionment. When asked, 'What do you do if you can't perform the trick?' he was told, 'Then we'll call the helicopter.' The former gymnast was not prepared to accept this. His brain began to work. His clear goal was to find a safe training method for freestyle sports. 'So many talents didn't develop because they got injured or were afraid to take risks.' It was also not possible to train many tricks properly, as you always had to think about everything, from the sequence in the air to the landing. 'With the airbags, landings are now safe, so you can practice a trick broken down into its individual steps without having to worry about a safe landing,' explains Pankiewicz, highlighting the advantages of Banger Park.

Although Gaugg was initially skeptical about whether his namesake's ambitious plans would work out, he was immediately 'on board.' 'I got my first snowboard when I was about 13, the Burton Cruzer at the time, and from then on I was always on it,' recalls the man from Scharnitz. 'That's why the idea immediately appealed to me.' They started planning together. Pankiewicz designed the first jump, including the airbag he had developed himself, while Gaugg drew up plans, obtained licenses, and drilled a groundwater well with a tank for irrigating the airbags required for a safe, smooth landing. After a lot of building and rebuilding, the first ski jump was finally ready for the first test jumps at the end of 2017.

Pankiewicz picked up his phone and called the coach of double Olympic snowboarding champion Anna Gasser. 'I had spoken to him before about my plans, and he said, call me when you're ready. So that's what I did.' A few days later, Gasser was standing in Scharnitz testing the Banger Park prototype. 'That was the moment when I thought to myself, this could really be something,' recalls Gaugg, and, despite his enthusiasm, admits to having harbored doubts for a long time.

It didn't take long for word to spread throughout the scene that a summer training park was being created in Scharnitz, the kind that had previously only been known in Japan. 'It was crazy, I had no idea how I was going to run the park,' says Pankiewicz. But he grew with his tasks, secured a cooperation with Burton, which he had always dreamed of as a young snowboarder, and soon set about planning new jumps and facilities. After the snowboarders, the freeskiers came, and the rest is already history today, in 2024.

Banger Park has become an integral part of the scene. Olympic champions and world champions from all over the world use it for their summer training. It has revolutionized the level of jumpable tricks and training. 'In the past, people used to get through the summer with its poor conditions in the few glacier ski resorts and only started training properly again at the start of winter. Today, people train in the summer and focus on competitions in the winter,' explains Pankiewicz. All athletes agree that if you don't train in Scharnitz in the summer, you're out of luck in the winter. With the latest ski jump, which was inaugurated in autumn 2023 and features two side in-runs for halfpipe specialists, Banger Park has also become unique in the world. 'Nowhere else is there this type of jump,' says the founder proudly.

However, he will not be resting on his laurels now that the area at the Brandlift is more or less fully utilized. Because he and Gaugg share a dream: 'We would like a one-stop solution with a clean base building, changing rooms, showers, gym, and trampoline park,' Gaugg allows himself to dream for a moment. 'Oh yes, and I'd also like to get the lift up and running, freshly refurbished.' It will be a long road to get there, as the authorization procedures are complex. But who knows how far Alex and Alex will get with their inexhaustible enthusiasm and wealth of ideas! The next innovation, a Wonder Carpet at the new Sidehits Jumps, will go into operation at the start of the 2024 season.