For snowboarders, retirement comes early. “The average age is probably 22,” says pro Eric Willett, “and I’m 28 and getting pretty close to the end of the competitive side of it.” Willett isn’t just older than the average snowboarder, he also got started later. Like many people in his hometown of Breckenridge, Colorado, he started skiing shortly after learning to walk, and picked up snowboarding before he was a teenager.

But unlike most pro boarders, he waited until after high school to wade into the competitive world of snowboarding. “A lot of kids do online classes even in high school. Kids are starting competitively as young as 15. For me to start at 18, I didn’t get my first invite to X-Games until I was 20, which was quite late. Some kids had already been in it three to four years.”

The summer he was 18, he headed to a competition in New Zealand (southern hemisphere, cold summers, all that jazz), won some prize money, and realized he could do well enough to keep cash coming in. And after a while major sponsorships, from the likes of Stoli Vodka, whose most recent ad we now feel obligated to post, followed.

Willett’s diet almost reads like a caricature: cereal, potato chips, more Mountain Dew than water. But if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. While the rest of the warm-weather world is focusing on Rio this summer, Willett’s eyes are on the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. He was in the running for a spot on the U.S. snowboarding slopestyle team for the 2014 games when things took a turn during a Grand Prix qualifying event: “There was a lot of tailwind that day, which pushes you down the mountain, and as soon as I took off the jump I could feel it push me. I instantly knew I was going to go too big and tried to adjust for the landing. It was much bigger than I expected, and I landed on my butt, which wound up compressing one of my vertebrae.”

Willett was attempting a backside double cork 10-80, something he’s done “hundreds” of times without a problem. This time, though, he ended up with a compound fracture of a vertebra up between his ribs. He had literally broken his back, taking him out of the running for the Sochi Olympics.

"Willett’s diet almost reads like a caricature: cereal, potato chips, more Mountain Dew than water. But if it’s not broke, don’t fix it."

But he’s back on the slopes after extensive PT, and training with the U.S. snowboarding team over the summer in Australia. As with any sport, motivation is key. “I like snowboarding because it’s entirely you,” he says. “In team sports, you’re as strong as your worst player, and no matter how well you play, you’re still going to lose if the whole team doesn’t do well. Snowboarding is totally based on how I perform, and I can only blame myself when I don’t do well.”

Still, it’s hard to deny the impact of growing up where he did. Breckenridge is a beacon for winter sports, the site of extreme snowboarding and skiing, mountaineering contests, and the Imperial Challenge, a winter-mountain version of a triathlon. Willett may have played baseball as a kid, and mountain bikes for cross-training (it works the same core and leg muscles), but he was probably destined to snowboard.

“Your main years of snowboarding are the years that normal kids go to college, so I never got the chance to figure out what I was interested in. Instead it was, ‘Okay, I’m good at snowboarding, I’m gonna do that for the next ten years.’ I don’t know, if I grew up somewhere else, what I’d be doing.”

BreakfastCheerios and banana

LunchSki-lodge hamburger

SnacksBarbecue potato chips, “way too much” Mountain Dew

DinnerGrilled chicken, salad, green beans

Luke Darby is a contributor to GQ, covering news, entertainment, and the environment. A Louisiana native, he now resides in Cleveland, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, the Dallas Observer, and Marie Claire.Related Stories for GQReal Life DietSkiing and Snowboarding