Park City, UT – He descends from a skiing family including alpine racing legends Holly Flanders, his mom, and Erik Scholpy, his cousin, but this freeskiing Park City local spends his time in the park, not in gates. Alex Schlopy is making his own history as well in slopestyle skiing having just won the first ever slopestyle skiing World Championship gold medal, as well as the Winter X Games Big Air in Aspen, Colo. and slopestyle at the final Dew Tour stop at Snowbasin, Utah.nQ: Tell us a little a bit about you.
Schlopy: Born and raised in Park City, Utah. I pretty much grew up skiing with my mom and family. Around 10 or 11 I fell in love with skiing and have been doing it ever since.

Q: Your family has an alpine racing background, so how did you get involved in freeskiing and slopestyle skiing?
Schlopy: I never really was into racing or anything like that. I loved doing tricks. I did gymnastics competitively when I was eight to 11. After that I got bored of being in the gym and kind of channeled it through skiing instead of gymnastics.

Q: How did it feel to win the very first slopestyle skiing World Championships?
Schlopy: I didn’t really expect it. I’ve been traveling and competing so much that I came to Park City ready for whatever happened and ended up winning, which was insane and so cool.

Q: When you’re not on skis, what do you do for fun?
Schlopy: Basically during the summer I like to skateboard and dirt bike. Last summer I tried to surf a little bit but I’m not very good at that.

Q: What’s next?
Schlopy: I’m doing a film shoot with Matchstick productions. We’re going to be shooting powder and backcountry type stuff which is different for me because I’m used to skiing park mostly. It should come in the fall – it should be pretty good. After that I’m going to Europe for the European X Games, this is the second year I’m going to do it so it should be pretty cool.