Emile Bergeron - Off The Leash Video Edition (2024)

Profile and significance

Émile “Bmile” Bergeron is a Québec-born freeski original whose reputation rests on memorable street segments and a benchmark X Games result. Raised in the Lac-Beauport / Québec City corridor, he moved from early park edits into a film-first path, earning a silver medal at X Games Real Ski 2020 with a part that mixed high-consequence architecture, meticulous speed control, and clean, readable landings. Years of clips with Quebec crews and frequent cameos in projects anchored by Phil Casabon and Brady Perron had already put him on the radar; Real Ski confirmed to a global audience what the core scene knew: Bergeron is a case study in readable difficulty. His best work turns complex spots into coherent lines that make sense at full speed, a quality that fans rewatch and riders can learn from.

Brand support reflects that identity. He rides for Armada Skis, wears Picture Organic Clothing, and stays rooted in Québec’s scene via shop partner D-Structure. The combination signals priorities—durable platforms, predictable swing weight, and a community-first approach—that line up with a career built more on edits than on bib numbers.

Competitive arc and key venues

Bergeron’s headline result is Real Ski 2020 silver, a medal earned in an all-video, judge-voted format where trick quality, spot selection, and line design carry as much weight as rotation counts. The segment distilled his approach: measured speed into unforgiving takeoffs, early grabs or presses that stabilize the axis, and exits that protect momentum so the next feature arrives on time. Before and after that moment, his calendar has centered on projects and scene events that sharpen the same habits. He turns up at spring gatherings around Sweden’s Kläppen, stacks street footage at home in Québec City, and keeps timing sharp with park laps at Le Relais and Stoneham when the storm cycle cooperates.

Two Québec venues, in particular, explain his toolkit. Night laps at Le Relais in Lac-Beauport reward honest edge angles and quick decisions on compact in-runs; mistakes get punished quickly, so economy becomes second nature. A short drive away, Stoneham adds higher-speed park panels and a dense rail zone that make cadence and line choice pivotal. Those places, paired with the city’s winter architecture, created the foundation for his street work. When he travels—Kläppen in the spring or larger resort builds in the Alps—the same rhythm holds: protect line speed, finish tricks early, and let the course breathe.

How they ski: what to watch for

Bergeron skis with deliberate economy. Approaches square up early, shoulders stay stacked, and lock-ins look decisive rather than dramatic. On rails he favors surface swaps that resolve cleanly, presses with visible shape, and exits that leave enough speed for the next setup. On jumps he commits to the grab early—safety, tail, or blunt depending on axis—and holds it long enough to calm the rotation and keep his hips over his feet. Directional variety is there—forward and switch, left and right—but never at the expense of cadence. The tell in his clips is spacing: each trick creates room for the next one instead of stealing from it, which is why his lines read clearly at 1x speed without slow-motion rescue.

For viewers trying to “see” the difference, track three cues. First, he sets takeoff height with patience; there’s no frantic reach for the lip. Second, grab choice is functional, not decorative—it stabilizes axis and dictates landing shape. Third, you can feel momentum survive landings; he rarely needs panic turns or speed-killing checks to set up the next feature. Those traits scan just as well on a Quebec staircase as they do on a spring booter in Scandinavia.

Resilience, filming, and influence

The through-line of Bergeron’s career is composure. Long before Real Ski, he shadowed and collaborated with Québec’s leading stylists, absorbing a film grammar that prizes honest speed and clean exits. His own projects—shorts like “The Big Batch,” street pieces shot around Québec City, and contributions to friends’ edits—stick to that grammar. The result is footage that ages well: it’s legible at full speed, it shows decision-making rather than chaos, and it rewards rewatching because the trick math is transparent. Editors trust his shots because they don’t rely on quick cuts to hide sketchy landings; younger skiers emulate the way he finishes tricks early enough to ride away centered.

Influence also shows up locally. Backed by D-Structure and filming on familiar terrain, Bergeron helps keep Québec City positioned as a capital of urban skiing. The community sees how a Real Ski medalist builds a spot, maps approach angles, and chooses tricks that use an obstacle end to end. That approach has a ripple effect: crews raise build quality, riders invest in speed management, and the region continues to produce segments that travel well beyond provincial borders.

Geography that built the toolkit

Place is the skeleton of Bergeron’s skiing. The winter rhythm of Québec City—cold nights, reliable snowmaking, and dense urban features—teaches honesty. At Le Relais, night skiing and compact radii punish late commitments and sloppy edge angles, so repetition breeds tidy mechanics. Stoneham layers in faster snow and longer in-runs where early grab timing and centered landings become non-negotiable. The city itself supplies the stair sets, closeouts, and wall rides that form a street skier’s vocabulary. When spring moves the scene to Kläppen, the features are bigger but the demands are the same: protect speed, space tricks thoughtfully, and keep body position quiet so the line holds its shape from first hit to last.

This loop—local parks, city missions, Scandinavian spring blocks—explains why his skiing travels. Swap conditions and backdrops as you like; the habits remain portable because they’re built on timing and momentum management rather than on single-use spectacle.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Bergeron’s kit is designed for repeatability. Armada provides park-capable platforms with balanced swing weight for early-grab, measured-spin skiing and the edge durability street segments demand. Picture Organic Clothing covers long, variable filming days with weatherproof, mobility-friendly outerwear. D-Structure, as a home-province partner, keeps his setup grounded in the community that shaped him. For skiers translating this into their own choices, the lesson is category fit over model names: pick a symmetrical or near-symmetrical park ski and mount it so presses feel natural without compromising takeoff stability; tune edges to hold on steel yet soften contact points to avoid surprise bites on swaps; and maintain fast bases so cadence doesn’t depend on perfect weather. None of this replaces timing, but the right platform makes timing repeatable.

There’s a process lesson, too. Bergeron’s medal-winning part didn’t come from throwing the biggest possible trick first—it came from mapping approaches, building well, and letting trick selection serve the spot. That mindset works for anyone: choose lines you can finish cleanly, commit to early control inputs (grabs and body position), and leave with momentum intact. It’s how good skiing reads clearly, whether the camera is ten meters from a Quebec handrail or panning through a spring park in Sweden.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Émile Bergeron matters because he turns difficulty into clarity. His Real Ski silver validated a style the scene already valued—calm mechanics, spot-specific trick choice, and landings that feed the next move. For fans, that makes his segments endlessly rewatchable; for developing skiers, it turns “style” from a vibe into a checklist you can practice: square the approach early, use the grab to stabilize the axis, and protect momentum through the outrun. If you’re tracking freeski for street parts that hold up on first watch and on frame-by-frame breakdowns, keep Bergeron near the top of your list. The toolkit is proven, and the influence continues to ripple from Lac-Beauport to every park where riders learn to make hard things look simple.

Profile and significance

Philip “B-Dog” Casabon is a Canadian freeski icon from Shawinigan, Québec, whose style-first language—presses, butters, nollies, reverts, and shiftys that breathe—reshaped modern park and urban skiing. He rose through night laps at his local hill, Vallée du Parc, and became one of the most influential riders of his generation by proving that creativity, definition, and flow can outweigh brute force. His cultural footprint is matched by hardware: back-to-back gold medals at X Games Real Ski in 2018 and 2019, plus the 2018 Fan Favorite nod, cemented his status as a peer-elected standard. In the same window, he released the widely praised film “En Particulier” with Brady Perron and was named Freeskier’s Skier of the Year, a rare double for a rider focused on film and street. Casabon matters because he made style specific and teachable—clips that hold up frame by frame and a movement language that any progressing skier can study and apply.

Competitive arc and key venues

Casabon’s competitive résumé is unconventional by design. Early in his career he tested himself in slopestyle at Aspen, making multiple Winter X Games appearances when the discipline was still defining itself. As urban skiing’s broadcast moment arrived, he shifted to segments and rider-curated showcases that better matched his voice. The pivot paid off: his 2018 X Games Real Ski gold, delivered alongside the Fan Favorite award, was followed by a repeat gold in 2019—rare back-to-back wins that confirmed his dominance in the all-video, all-street format. In the culture-defining B&E era at Les Arcs, he collected “Best Style” honors in both 2014 and 2015 on a skate-inspired setup designed to reward touch and originality. Those landmarks—Aspen’s spotlight, Real Ski’s medals, and Les Arcs’ style awards—map the arc of a skier who used competition as a proof-of-concept for ideas refined in edits.

The places tied to his name help explain the skiing. Vallée du Parc gave him the repetition and switch comfort that show up in his lines. Aspen’s big-build tempo at Aspen Snowmass taught wind calls, long decks, and pressure management under cameras. The B&E park at Les Arcs encouraged butters into spins, long presses, and transfers that value feel over amplitude. Together they shaped a rider who reads features instantly and turns modest speed into full sentences of skiing.

How they ski: what to watch for

Casabon skis with economy and definition. Approaches stay tall and neutral. He sets rotation late, locks grabs early—often with unmistakable tweaks—and lets the trick breathe rather than rushing the set. On rails, the signatures are square entries, long-held presses and backslides that are obvious to the eye, surface swaps with minimal arm swing, and exits where the shoulders stay aligned so momentum carries into the next feature. Even when the spot is complex, he organizes edge pressure early to keep the base flat through kinks, which is why his landings read inevitable rather than rescued. On jumps and side hits the same patience appears: pop comes from the feet up, grabs are defined before 180 degrees, and the upper body stays quiet so the skis do the storytelling. The result is a blueprint any rider can study—calm entry, patient pop, early grab definition, square-shoulder exit.

Resilience, filming, and influence

Casabon’s influence runs through films and community projects as much as medals. He built a decade-long catalog of replayable segments, culminating in the late-2010s run that paired Real Ski golds with a festival-tested film presence. The work emphasized honest speed, horizon awareness, and compositions that make slope angle and body organization clear—choices that help viewers learn, not just watch. In the B&E era, his partnership with Henrik Harlaut created a platform where style was the scorecard, then pushed those ideas back into parks, streets, and product design. Interviews and long-form conversations from this period reveal a method that prizes durability over hype: habits you can repeat when conditions are imperfect and cameras are rolling.

That durability—plus a willingness to mentor—keeps his influence alive in a generation that learns from edits. Coaches use his clips to illustrate patient setups and clean exits; riders break down his presses and shifty timing to build their own lines. He is both reference and proof: you do not need the world’s biggest jump to show world-class skiing if your movements are organized and your choices are clear.

Geography that built the toolkit

Place explains the method. Shawinigan’s Vallée du Parc is a human-scale hill where repetition is abundant and mistakes are obvious. Night laps there forged the switch comfort, precise edging, and patience that define his rail game. The spotlight and wind at Aspen Snowmass layered in big-feature timing and composure. The creative modules at Les Arcs rewarded a horizontal vocabulary—presses, butters, wheelies—that Casabon helped popularize, proving that expression at low to medium speeds can be as compelling as amplitude. When you trace the map, you see the fingerprints in every clip: local-hill repetition, big-park patience, and skate-park creativity applied to snow.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Casabon’s long relationship with Armada extended far beyond sticker placement. His pro model BDog and the experimental BDog Edgeless in Armada’s Zero Collection were designed to serve his priorities—predictable flex for presses and butters, confidence on switch landings, and swing weight that stays honest on slower-speed pops. The gear lessons for progressing skiers mirror that logic. Choose a true park ski with a balanced, medium flex you can bend without folding. Detune the contact points enough to reduce rail bite while maintaining dependable edge hold on the lip. Mount close enough to center that presses sit level and switch landings feel neutral. Keep binding ramp angles that don’t tip you onto your heels. Then build a process that matches the hardware: film laps, compare shoulder alignment and hip-to-ankle stack against a short checklist, and repeat until the movements become automatic. The setup is the scaffold; the habits are the house.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Fans care about Philip Casabon because his skiing ages well. The clips prioritize timing, organization, and line design over noise, which is why they survive slow-motion scrutiny years later. Progressing skiers care because the same choices are teachable on normal parks and real snowpacks. If your winter looks like night laps on a small hill, weekend missions to a destination park, and a few street sessions with friends, his blueprint shows how to turn limited speed and imperfect conditions into memorable skiing. The medals—back-to-back X Games Real Ski golds and Fan Favorite in 2018—are milestones; the lasting takeaway is a method: calm entry, patient pop, early grab definition, square-shoulder exit, and a flow that connects a run into a single sentence. That is why B-Dog remains essential viewing for anyone who cares about freeskiing’s style, substance, and future.