The Freeride World Tour is the pinnacle for many skiers. People like Markus Eder,  Tanner Hall and Candide Thovex all tackled it, with various levels of success. None of those legends had to overcome an added obstacle quite like Kevin Nichols did.

The Blizzard Skis and Tecnica Boots rider is honest and open when he discusses the details and struggles he faces with dealing with epilepsy and how it affects him as a professional skier and as a human being.

Dropping is very different from your usual ski movie, perhaps fewer spins, flips and slides but it’s no less engaging and actually really interesting. Kevin never looks for sympathy as he tells his story and explains a bit about epilepsy, not only, the condition but also the allergy he had to some of the medication. Everyone on the Tour takes risks on those steep, gnarly faces, Kevin is taking a risk just to get to the starting gate. A risk that he “can’t control.”

Kevin says he always thought that his story would be a “Comeback Story”  but it’s actually, as a male athlete he wanted to hide what was wrong with him and focus on his sport, but he was forced to face it,  talk about it and mentions the unique and different “podium” he found himself on. It’s a hell of a story and just as fascinating (if not more fascinating) than those icons I mentioned earlier.

From YouTube: Making it to the Freeride World Tour is hard. But making it with epilepsy is beyond imaginable. Unless you’re Kevin Nichols. Kevin has dealt with this complex brain disorder for years—resulting in many seizures, doctor visits, and medical experiments—but ultimately this challenge has made him stronger every single season. Here is his story.

Filmed and edited by Jake Burchmore