Born to fly

In celebration of the original ‘Godfather of Freestyle’. Born to Fly is the story of Australian Eric Hymans, one of the wild men of hot-dog skiing in the 1970s and ’80s, who lived an epic ski life.Eric Hymans isn’t a household name in today’s ski world – not in the Australian ski world he inhabited, nor in the freestyle worlds he had a hand in forming. But this engaging biography throws the spotlight on the often eyebrow-raising ski-bum culture of the early days. More than that, it’s a story of a warm-hearted, talented yet troubled man whose lack of family grounding, early exposure to drugs and desire to impress his ski-mad father sent him on a roller-coaster of partying, back-to-back ski seasons and a name as the Godfather of Freestyle.TALES FROM THE MOUNTAINThe story came about after a chance meeting in Mount Beauty, between Eric, approaching 60, and the author – a freerider, Falls Creek resident and fan of Team Red. At Eric’s bachelor pad over a bottle of Shiraz, to the backdrop of The Verbier Connection movie poster, the one-time legend tells his story. There are also accounts from Eric’s contemporaries – from Olympian Steve Lee to film-maker Trevor Avedissian, to Lynne Grosse, a major figure in the freestyle story (a former gymnast, she became Australian women’s champion two years after first putting on skis, as well as the first woman to do a double backflip on skis). Included are a collection of photos.The book features myriad mountain tales – some funny, some shocking – with Eric at the epicentre. It tells of his first break competing in bumps on the Peter Stuyvesant Freestyle Tour in Thredbo; of his job as a ‘sherpa’ in La Plagne, alongside Lynne, that led them towards movie-making with Jean-Claude Killy; and the birth of Team Red and Falls Creek’s Summit Masters bumps competition, devised by Lynne.TURBULENT TIMESThe peripheral stories are just as absorbing. Eric's Dutch father, Bob, built the first chairlift in the Southern Hemisphere after being a Japanese POW. The Hymans kids had a facinating upbringing. Until his 40s, Eric lived a life of mostly bumps, aerials and powder. He clocked top freestyle plaudits, appeared in films and photoshoots (namely The Verbier Connection) and, in those early days of athlete sponsorship, landed some kit deals.Along with evening jobs – mainly cooking at The Man Restaurant – he was the life and soul of parties by night. Unsurprisingly, he sometimes ran into trouble, sometimes drugs-related, and he flitted between women. In his words: “The agenda was having fun, living in the moment, searching for new thrills.” Many of his freeski and party pals had died along the way, and during the editing of the book his friend, former girlfriend, cofounder of Team Red and protégée Lynne passed away aged 56.The book was launched in September 2018, at the revival of Falls Creek’s Summit Masters, and in a sad but somehow fitting finale, Eric himself died, aged 60, that very night.Synopsis by Yolanda Carslaw - associate editor of Fall-line skiing magazine