My Name is Kalle Eriksson, I am an 18-year-old visually impaired (B3) alpine ski racer. I started to lose my vision 3 years ago from a rare case of solar retinopathy while I was skiing on a glacier in northern Sweden. This past year, I decided to embrace my disability and started ski racing. I immediately fell in love with the sport. I based myself in Cochrane Alberta to train five days a week at the Canadian para-alpine training center. I started working with my guide Sierra Smith who is an Ex-Canadian Ski Team member. Sierra is my eyes as we race down the hill. Through a two-way headset, she communicates to me what elements are coming up in the course and how to ski the fastest line possible. We immediately started to pick up speed in training and were starting to shock ourselves with how much we were improving and how well we were working as a team. 

Results:

We pushed out of a start gate together for the first time at the 2023 Canada winter games in P.E.I at the end of February, Claiming gold in the Giant Slalom race. In March we competed in the US and Canadian National Championships winning the Gold Medal in every race.  Currently, my FIS points rank me 7th in the world in Super Giant Slalom,  5th in Giant Slalom and 6th in Slalom.  We know there is more speed to be found through training and mileage in the course.  We are a solid team and are both committed to improving technically and racing faster.

After 1 season of racing we have been named as Prospect athletes by Alpine Canada. Sierra and I will have a full season of training and racing together next year with races in Europe and across North America with some World cup starts in the 2023-24 season.