New York City’s Times Square is one of the most expensive places in the world to advertise, and Cole Richardson has skied right into the heart of this limelight.
A video of the Canmore-based pro skier shredding deep powder in slow motion is currently featured on a huge, 10-story-tall digital billboard overlooking NYC’s crossroads as part of an Arc‘ Teryx marketing campaign.
The clip is accompanied by the words “No Wasted Days.”
The 22-year-old skier has had very few of those.
His Times Square debut is a big high in a professional skiing career that has already seen its share of highs and lows.
In 2023, he crashed into a tree while on a shoot in Japan, shattering his elbow and badly damaging his liver and pancreas. Some thought it might be a career-ender.
It wasn’t. But not long after returning to the skis last spring, he trashed four ligaments in one of his knees while skiing in Alaska. Down again but far from out.
Richardson is blessed with optimism. It’s why he clung to a youthful dream about appearing in a Times Square ad.
You may as well dream big.
He admits to having no idea how to pull it off. His strategy was to sit back, keep doing his thing on skis, and wait to see if someone would actually pay for it.
Then, he got a message from his Arc’Teryx sponsor.
“I just literally got a text one day, and somebody at Arc’Teryx was like, ‘Yo, did you know that we used a shot of you for the main billboard in Times Square?’ And I was just tripping. And I was like, ‘What, you guys didn’t tell me that before?’ Richardson told Powder Magazine.
So he immediately recruited his good friend Reid Ferguson, and they flew to New York together to see it in person. “Reid knows more than anybody in my life how much that meant to me and how exciting that was,” Richardson said. “And I’m just so hyped that I got to also give him his first experience in New York.”
While in the Big Apple, they filmed a short edit, which Richardson posted on Instagram.
One commenter, @scottgaffski, asked: ”Would your 14-year-old self have dreamed that? So sick!”
It turns out the young skier did dream that.
