Erro ettala - snowboarding in strange places
By: Shannon Thornton, April 20th 2025
Hailing from Espoo, a small city outside the capital of Finland, 40-year-old professional snowboarder Eero Ettala is celebrated for his versatility and innovation, being considered one of the world’s best all-terrain snowboarders.
Punting on to the international snowboarding scene in 2005 when he won first place at the Toyota Big Air contest held in Sapporo, Japan, Ettala has since only added to the trove of accomplishments held under his belt, including another 1st and three 2nd place finishes at the Big Air, and a gold medal in Slopestyle snowboarding at the 2010 X Games.
Ettala’s fresh and unconventional snowboarding has delivered groundbreaking clips of huge open- mountain launches, flips off of buildings, and extended rail-slides done in the dark and frozen Finnish winter, typically filming with Standard Films and Mack Dawg Productions. Despite multiple knee injuries, Ettala has demonstrated a remarkable resilience, continuing to push the boundaries of urban snowboarding. Ettala’s 2015 documentary, Ender , chronicled his snowboarding journey and achievements. More recently, in 2024, he unveiled Milestone, a reflective film that aimed the lens at the process of aging in an action sport, as well as his quest for balancing family life with a successful career.
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Beyond snowboarding, Ettala has expanded his presence into television, hosting Finnish TV shows such as Ota rahat ja juokse (“Take the money and run”) in 2016 and Suomen surkein kuski (“The saddest driver in Finland”, a reality TV show searching to find Finland’s worst driver) in 2018. Renowned for his creative approach to urban snowboarding, an approach built out of necessity to account for coastal Finland’s mostly flat terrain, Eero is also cited as one of the pioneers of using winches to generate the necessary speed for performing tricks on cityscape features.
With many urban spots going majorly unridden, Eero’s innovation illustrates the great possibilities for snowboarding in interesting places.
