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Pat Burgener’s (29) fingernails raise questions as soon as she greets him. Did he lose a bet? Or was he just bored? “No, no,” says the Lausanne resident, laughing. He runs his hands through his shoulder-length hair. “I often bite my nails,” he admits. To counter this, the French-speaking Swiss paint them. The moon, sun and stars can be seen. “I don’t want to destroy my ‘work of art’, so I leave the nails alone.”
Pat Burgener sits in his apartment in Crans-Montana USA. He lives here in the winter. His great-grandfather, an architect, once built the two-storey wooden house right next to the valley station. “That’s why he’s my hero,” Burgener says, smiling. Pat Burgener himself is also a hero, someone who has suffered a special fate. One of the world’s best snowboarders and an aspiring musician. Who released his first album last spring and has already won bronze twice at the World Halfpipe Championships.
But Burgener was not always on the bright side of life. As an eight-year-old he dreamed of a career as an athlete. “I was ridiculed for that for years.” He hears the same questions again and again: What if you get hurt? What if you’re not good enough? No one believes in little Pat’s successful future. The family also has doubts. The reason: Pat has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
Today he calls it his “superpower,” but at the time he couldn’t concentrate in school and had trouble reading. After breaks, he sometimes arrives 30 minutes late to class. “I prefer to play football or basketball. I was a rebel, an outsider.” He is expelled from five different schools and suffers.
During this time, between the ages of eight and twelve, he develops dark thoughts. “I wanted to kill myself.” His mother, Pauline Burgener (62), from Lebanon, would help him: “I told her to take me to a bridge.” There he wanted to jump to his death. When he talks about it, Burgener seems surprisingly composed. To this day, he has hardly spoken to his mother and father Hervé Burgener (61) about this time. Every now and then he is confronted with his past in everyday life. «When I walk over a bridge and look down, I realize again that I once wanted to jump down. These are very difficult moments.”
Pat Burgener owes the fact that he never jumped to his parents. “They always had my back.” Even when he independently declared at the age of 13 that his education was over. “I wanted to make my dream as a professional snowboarder come true.” However, he only found full fulfillment a few years later – in music. Since then, the guitar has been his most faithful companion besides the snowboard. Despite a difficult start. Pat’s new hobby was harshly criticized in the snowboarding scene. “My own role models called my music shit!”
No time for après-ski
What touches him first, he uses as motivation later. The negative comments fall silent. As snowboarding competition recovers in the summer, Pat Burgener is performing more than 30 concerts in Europe. He travels from performance to performance in the electric bus. No path is too far for him. “I’m in survival mode every day.” Because he does not have a school diploma, his music or sports career must succeed. He deals with daily life with the right focus. «Since I was little, I have given everything to be successful. Everything else is secondary, including a girlfriend.”
Every evening the single in Crans-Montana walks past an après-ski bar to the gym. He often sees acquaintances who want to encourage him to drink. “I then explain to them that I have other goals in life and move on.” Is it financially worth it? Burgener shrugs. “I have no idea how much money I have.” His older brother Marc-Antoine (31) takes care of his finances.
Source : Blick
I’m Emma Jack, a news website author at 24 News Reporters. I have been in the industry for over five years and it has been an incredible journey so far. I specialize in sports reporting and am highly knowledgeable about the latest trends and developments in this field.
