Craig Murray’s Kindness
NICE GUYS FINISH FIRST
Craig Murray was upside down. Halfway through his rotation he could see the 30-foot Haüsl Cliff he was heading straight for, but he didn’t have time to process that. He landed, catlike, just a millisecond before he leapt back into the air. Craig launched into a double drop, barely ollieing over the exposed rocks of the Wildseeloder in Fieberbrunn, Austria, on his way to the top step of the Freeride World Tour podium.
Just one week later in Verbier, Switzerland, Craig gazed up at the Bec des Rosses, stacked deep with snow for the first time in many years, and learned that the world was shutting down. It was Friday, March 13, 2020. Just when he was skiing his absolute best—and giving reigning leader Isaac Freeland a run for his money—a global pandemic shuttered the Freeride World Tour.
Craig, then just 22 years old, shrugged off the remains of his truncated season (he finished fourth overall) and went back to Verbier’s W Hotel, where fellow Kiwis Hank Bilous and Blake Marshall were letting loose in an end-of-the-world party. Craig worried about how to get back home to New Zealand. “But mostly the Bec looked insane,” Craig lamented. “I was just gutted not to be able to ski it stacked up like that.”
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