The men behind the Banger Park

"Alex came into my office", recalls the Scharnitz resident. "And told me, I want to buy the lift and the slope." Although Gaugg had long been paying more into the lift than he got out of it and often spent his entire vacation in the lift hut with the ironing, this was not an option for him. "The lift is an heirloom from my father. At the valley station, there is even a huge painted picture of me, which he had put up there during my wildest snowboarding days." You don't let go of something like that. The two agreed on a lease, and Gaugg was skeptical. The plan by Pankiewicz to build a summer training center for snowboarders on airbags sounded exciting but also very ambitious. "How is that supposed to work?", I asked him. "That shouldn't be your concern", was the reply.

Pankiewicz had a vision. Born in Wroclaw, the 33-year-old had begun 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 was based on the Soviet method, which was extremely demanding but never dangerous. "We learned every movement, every jump step by step, always secured over trampolines, nets, and belts that could pull us up before we landed." Even at the highest level, nothing is dangerous in gymnastics, as the athletes only perform their routines on the hard mat floor when they are truly confident in them.

At 18, Pankiewicz switched to snowboarding, trying to apply his gymnastics skills to the snowboard and succeed there. However, the first training sessions brought a certain disillusionment. When asked, “What do you do if you can’t land the trick?”, the answer was: “Then we call the helicopter.” The former gymnast did not want to accept this fact. His mind began to work. His clear goal: to find a safe training method for freestyle sports. “So many talents didn’t develop because they got injured or shied away from the risk.” Many tricks also couldn’t be trained purposefully, as one had to consider everything, from the sequence in the air to the landing. “With airbags, landings are safe today, so you can train a trick broken down into its individual steps without having to think about a safe landing,” explains Pankiewicz the advantages of the Banger Park.

Although Gaugg was initially skeptical about whether the ambitious plans of his namesake would actually work out, he was immediately "on board." "I got my first snowboard when I was around 13, the then-current Burton Cruzer, and from then on I was always on it," recalls the resident of Scharnitz. "That's why the idea immediately intrigued me." Together they began to plan. Pankiewicz designed the first jump ramp along with a self-developed airbag, Gaugg created plans, obtained permits, and drilled a groundwater well along with a tank for the watering needed for the safe, frictionless landing of the airbags. After much building and remodeling, the first jump ramp was finally ready for action at the end of 2017 for the first test jumps.

Then Pankiewicz took his phone and called the coach of snowboarding double Olympic champion Anna Gasser. "I'd spoken to him about my plans before, and he said, call me when you're ready. That's what I did." A few days later, Gasser stood in Scharnitz and tested the Banger Park prototype. "That was the moment when I thought this could really be something," recalls Gaugg and admits that despite all the excitement, he harbored doubts for a long time.

It didn't take long for it to spread throughout the entire scene that a summer training park was being created in Scharnitz, much like one had previously known only from Japan. "It was crazy, I had no idea how I was supposed to manage the park,” says Pankiewicz. But he rose to the challenge, secured a partnership with Burton, which he had always dreamed of as a young snowboarder, and soon began planning new jumps and facilities. After the snowboarders came the freestylers, and the rest is history as of today, 2024.

The Banger Park has now become indispensable in the scene. Olympic champions and world champions from all over the world use it for summer training. It has revolutionized the level of tricks performed and the training itself. "In the past, one struggled through the summer with the poor conditions in the few glacier ski resorts, only to start training properly again with the beginning of winter. Today, training takes place in summer, and winter focuses on competitions,” explains Pankiewicz. Anyone who doesn’t train in Scharnitz during the summer is out of the picture in winter, all athletes agree on that. With the latest jump, inaugurated in autumn 2023 and featuring two side accesses for halfpipe specialists, the Banger Park has also become unique worldwide. “Nowhere else is there this type of jump,” the founder proudly states.

He will not rest now, where the area at the brand lift has been 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, a strength training room, and a trampoline park,” Gaugg allows himself to dream briefly. "Oh, and I would also love to get the lift running again, it would be freshened up." The path to that will still be a long one, as the approval processes are complex. But who knows how far Alex and Alex will get with their inexhaustible enthusiasm and creativity! By the beginning of the 2024 season, there will already be a new magic carpet operating at the new Sidehits Jumps.