In celebration of the Alpine World Ski Championships 2025 in Saalbach
In Austria, skiing is sometimes referred to as dancing with the mountains. Shifting your weight from side to side as you speed down a slope is a dance-like sensation that gives a sense of enormous physical freedom. And just like with real dancing, the weightlessness that develops into floating between heaven and earth on a snowy slope, whether on a freshly groomed piste or dusty powder snow, triggers a permanent grin, gets our hearts racing and even trains our thighs. At times like these, we feel like world champions as we savour the moment, master our personal challenges and feel completely at one with nature as we take in the breathtaking snow-capped scenery. This coin captures the happiness of a perfect ski day. Is there a better gift for someone who loves this sport?
We wanted to make a slightly different ‘skier coin’. Not a classic one showing a skier racing down a piste. No, we wanted something more abstract. We limited ourselves to the skier's head: helmet and ski goggles. The latter prominently reflects the goal that the athlete has in mind: to become world champion.
And we wanted to tell the story of how top sporting achievements can sometimes cast a spell over an entire country, indeed that people identify very strongly with the athlete:
You feel like a winner yourself.
The area under the glasses therefore only shows the contours of a face, otherwise it is a blank space that can be filled in by the viewer. Furthermore, it is polished so that the viewer can see himself reflected in it and thus in the sportsman.