Jérôme Caroli pushes freeride skiing and freeride biking in his movie “Combine”

“Combine” is a two-year project that was awaited with much anticipation, finally premiered last December and is now available online for everyone to enjoy. The movie combines skiing and biking, both in the high alpine freeride variant, and features lines reminiscent of the legendary “La Liste”—in fact Jérémie Heitz is part of Jérôme’s movie, too. It opens up a new chapter in the life of Jérôme Caroli, who has made a name for himself mainly as a professional mountainbike athlete, and follows a new path set by the mountains around his home in the Valais. It’s a path that we now can also follow simply by watching his movie.

Jérôme Caroli grew up in the Val de Bagnes, just below the famous freeriding hub of Verbier. As a kid, he learned both skiing and biking in the local club and dabbed his feet into freeriding in both sports early on. He always loved both sports but somehow he ended up becoming a professional mountainbiker and mainly engaged in downhill racing where he finally made it to the highest level. Racing in a sport that heavily involves high tech equipment like mountainbikes demands plenty of time all year round, so skiing had to take the backseat even though Jérôme always took inspiration from the mountains around his home and kept venturing in the backcountry on skis as much as his busy schedule would allow.

Then two years ago, after much deliberation about where to stir his sportive career in the future, Jérôme decided to quit the race circuit and focus on media projects instead. He started to approach high alpine freeride lines with his bike, something that he got inspired to do by his skiing background. This new approach also freed his time in winter and he found a new focus in skiing, building upon his experience from both sports and raising his ski game to a new level. The result is the movie “Combine” that he produced together with Nicolas Falquet. Of course this is another proof that Jérôme has always remained connected to the world of skiing as many will remember Nicolas from his own ski projects like “Color Trip”.

If you want to get a deep dive into the motivation and history of Jérôme Caroli, best read our article “Finding His Line” in Downdays Ski Stories Volume 6. It’s the opening story of the book and for good reason. The images are breathtaking and the storyline is captivating. Of course, the article has much reference to “Combine” and both could be described as complementary. When we talked with Jérôme for the book article, he was still very much involved in the production of the movie, so it also features insights into his mindset during this time—it was definitely intense.

To get more background info about the production of “Combine”, we suggest to head over to the website of El Tony Mate, one of Jérôme’s sponsors and a great supporter of the movie project. There you will find an interview with Jérôme focusing on the production, its problems and benefits. In fact, he started the whole new phase of his professional life with a major injury, raising many doubts about the new direction. Not the least thanks to the support of El Tony, Jérôme continued on his new path and it definitely paid off.