A go to to his Instagram and you will notice Trennon Paynter leaping off a mountain on a hang-glider, taking a nook on a bike, foil-boarding, catching a wave, carving by means of recent powder on skis or snowboarding excessive above a halfpipe.
To not point out hurling himself off a cliff hooked up to a protracted static line, the opposite finish of which was hooked up to the center of a slack line that bridged a chasm.
Paynter known as the one-off a “large swing.” Others may name it madness.
“It was a protected factor,” Paynter stated. “But it surely was very thrilling.”
No marvel Paynter was named in 2012 to ESPN’s record of the “50 most influential individuals in motion sports activities.”
The 56-year-old Canadian halfpipe ski coach has not slowed down since.
Hold-gliding is a favorite pastime.
“To me it’s the closest factor to being a chook,” stated Paynter, who additionally has his pilot’s license and flies small planes.
“It’s not as scary or harmful as individuals’s notion of it’s,” he added. “It’s one other type of aviation … The security or hazard in it actually lies within the selections you make.”
However others can see it in a different way.
“I do know my mum has held her breath quite a lot of instances,” stated Paynter. “However she’s additionally been actually supportive of it. I’ve been fortunate. Each my mother and father have been so adventurous.”
Adventurous sufficient to maneuver to Australia, the place Paynter was born. The household moved again to Canada when he was 5, and he grew up in Kimberley, B.C., however now calls Squamish residence.
He began ski racing earlier than turning to freestyle snowboarding in his late teenage years. Through the ’90s, he competed in moguls on the world scene and positioned ninth representing Canada on the 1999 World Championships in Meiringen, Switzerland.
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Paynter was sidelined in 2000 when he broke his pelvis in World Cup competitors at Deer Valley. Paynter recovered and represented Australia on the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis, ending twenty third.
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“A dream come true,” he recalled.
“The expertise was various,” he added. “I used to be not thrilled with my end result. I actually felt I used to be able to higher by way of the end result I received there. However given my state of affairs main as much as it — the damage, the comeback, the challenges — and simply the kind of lifelong dream of snowboarding within the Olympics, it nonetheless was overwhelmingly optimistic.
“The second of standing in that begin gate, searching — they’d a giant stadium erected for followers — and simply that data that you just’re on the world’s best sporting stage, it’s one thing that has caught with me for all times.”
It’s a sense he works onerous to assist his athletes obtain.
“He’s accomplished a lot for the halfpipe staff … He’s at all times pondering outdoors the field,” stated shut buddy and former Olympic snowboard champion Maelle Ricker, who’s co-head coach of the Canadian snowboard cross staff. “And he at all times places the athletes first in every thing. We’re very fortunate to have him as a part of the Canadian Olympic sports activities system, for positive.”
Paynter retired after the 2002 season however got here again in 2004, whereas teaching the Alberta ski staff, to compete in a World Cup occasion in Fernie, B.C. Flips had been lastly allowed in moguls competitors, so “I lastly received to go the other way up in a moguls competitors.”
“However extra importantly, I received to compete very near residence at a resort the place I had spent a lot of my time as a child, and so many family and friends drove up from Kimberley to look at. In order that was particular.”
In all, he made 53 World Cup begins, with eight top-10 finishes, together with a career-high fifth in Blackcomb in 1999.
Paynter was among the many group led by the late Sarah Burke that efficiently pushed for halfpipe snowboarding to be added to the Olympic program (snowboard halfpipe had been in since 1998).
“We noticed what snowboarders had been doing. We stated that it seems to be like enjoyable. We began leaping into the ‘pipe with them,” stated Paynter. “The Olympics, nevertheless, it’s a slow-moving animal.”
Burke and Paynter had been shut pals, and he coached her on the 2005 FIS Freestyle World Championship, the place she received the inaugural halfpipe ski occasion. Tragically, Burke died in 2012 after a coaching accident and by no means received to see her sport debut on the Sochi Olympics in 2014.
Halfpipe snowboarding has developed ever since, with the bar always being raised.
“Ridiculously,” Paynter stated with a chuckle. “The remark that will get tossed round, it appears, perpetually is ‘Nicely, I can’t see it getting any crazier than this.’ After which by some means it does.”
“It was once an eight-foot excessive 540 was form of a game-changer trick. That was world-leading. And now now we have individuals doing 23-foot-high double-cork 1620s,” he added. “The size of it, the amplitude, the rotations — in fact, that is supported as nicely by how a lot better the halfpipes have gotten.”
As that degree has risen, so has the hazard and the necessities for the halfpipe to be excellent. Paynter says that has made it more durable — and costlier — for resorts to construct the form of halfpipe that high athletes want to coach on.
“And so numerous resorts, sadly for us, have simply moved on,” he stated.
Calgary has the one halfpipe that meets the Canadian staff requirements for coaching on residence soil.
“I’d like to see that change,” stated Paynter.
He received into browsing in his late ’30s and has began working with elite surfers, who’re beginning to do the form of aerial rotations Paynter is so acquainted with.
“A wave is so much like a halfpipe,” he defined.
It’s one other sport that gives swoopies, a phrase Paynter conjured as much as describe the feeling of simultaneous side-to-side and up-and-down motion.
Paynter has additionally raced bikes, a love he received from his father. He has a number of bikes, together with an Indian FTR 1200 — “very quick, very enjoyable” — in addition to a KTM 530 EXC filth bike and a few older fashions.
Relating to 4 wheels, he drives a 1994 Ford Ranger that’s eggplant purple.
“My car funds went into bikes,” stated Paynter, who has been the top coach of the Canadian halfpipe ski staff since Might 2011.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Feb. 9, 2026.
