Photos by Nick Shearer / Park City Ski & Snowboard
Just four months after he was adopted from Ethiopia by Jody and Mark Giddings, Bo Giddings was skiing. Only three years old at the time, Bo, who still couldn’t speak any English, was a natural on the terrain at Maine’s Sunday River Resort. “He immediately took to it and loved it,” Jody says.
Bo, now 15, admits he was too young to remember much, but he says: “I didn’t like being slow. I was in a baby ski group and spent most of the time hitting jumps on the side of the trail while the rest of the group took their time skiing down.”
It was a clue of what was to come. Back when Bo was 11, he was building jumps in his backyard in Bethel, Maine, and learning his first tricks. One night, with the outdoor lights shining on the snowy kicker, his buddies convinced him he was ready to throw a backflip. “We’d been talking about it a lot,” says Bo. “And one of my friends just looked at me and said, ‘I think you’ve got this.’ So I went for it, and I nailed it.”
The next year, he began competing in the terrain park and quickly became a regular podium finisher on the New England circuit. Before long the family moved to Park City, Utah, so Bo could pursue the sport more seriously. “I love competing,” he says. “But what I really love is going to competitions and getting to hang out with friends I otherwise don’t get to see.”
There are a couple of reasons why Bo has progressed so quickly in the sport. One major contributor is that when he’s not skiing, he’s spending time outside working on his balance and coordination. “I love to skateboard,” he says. “I feel like any skating sport is good for skiing.”
The other key to Bo’s success is his willingness to listen to his coaches and learn from his mistakes. “I’ve had some bad crashes,” he says. “You have to laugh it off, take a few steps back, and try something a little easier. Then work your way back up to that trick.”
“He’s super coachable,” says Keith Shipman, head competition coach for the Park City freeski team. “He’ll take in the information, spend a minute thinking about it, then go for it. I like that he takes time before he tries something again.”
Bo hopes that approach leads to even bigger accomplishments. He has his eyes set on making the US Ski Team and competing in the X Games and the Olympics. But more than that, he’d like to be seen as an inspiration. “There aren’t many black kids in the skiing community,” he says. “Someday I want to hear young black kids say, ‘I got into this because of Bo.’ ”