Technical, yet smooth with a great style--you know we're talking about Wille Yli-Luoma. This man will go off whenever and wherever he can, trying anything and everything in any situation, whether on the jibs or pipes in a park, or out in the backcountry full of cliffs and powder (even on his snowmobile). He employs a strong work ethic, clocking in as many riding hours as any snowboarder you can name.
25-year-old Wille was born on February 9, 1979 in Sipoo, Finland (a half-hour from Helsinki), where he began snowboarding a decade ago at Talma with good friends like Joni Makinen and Jussi Oksanen. Appropriately nicknamed Bloody Wille, he tends to tear-up his face quite a bit. In fact, he's still trying to fix the teeth he knocked out on his knee in a harsh landing a couple of years back. Never say "last run".
Wille spends his off-time enjoying photography, designing board graphics, bicycling, skateboarding, fishing, golfing, traveling and hanging-out with his 3-year-old daughter, Lilou. Wille lists his favorite snowboarders of all time as Jamie, Nate, Terje, Ingemar and Peter; his favorite spots as home resort Talma, Snow Summit and Squaw Valley and his favorite boots as the Thirty Two Forecast. The highlight of Ice Man's career has been simply discovering powder.
These days, Wille enjoys riding with JD Solberg, Jussi Oksanen, David Benedeck, Louie and Travis. "It's fun when you do it to a certain point, but after a while, it starts to become a job. That's why I'm having a break now, so it doesn't become too much work," Wille comments on filming. His future goals are to avoid the one-up filming circus that is currently taking the fun out of pro snowboarding, and to "just snowboard, have fun, go to parties, make enough money so I can sit on my ass somewhere for the rest of my life and not do anything." Sounds like a plan.
