Our Story
We are a family of six that lives near the mountains and loves to ski. Both parents are sports educators, and my father, Robert, was also an Olympian and a ski-jumping/nordic combination coach.
The story of Skiler began with my older brother, Nino, who was born with Down syndrome. His skiing progressed more slowly, and he lagged behind the rest of the family. I love my brother very much, so I wanted us to find a way that would make it easier for him to learn to ski.
Existing ski-teaching aids did not give us the desired results. My father had to use all his educational and coaching skills and came up with a concept that would allow Nino to safely ski with the family and, at the same time, help him improve his technical skills.
He created Skiler, a ski-learning tool that provides complete control over speed, ski direction – you can even set the skis on their curbs – and, most importantly, it forces the skier to assume the correct posture.
We were surprised to see how Nino started applying the correct skiing stance straight away. He quickly acquired the necessary knowledge and began to enjoy skiing. After three seasons, he was able to safely ski the steepest sections of the ski resort, all on his own. Now, he even skims the steep and icy parts better than his classically trained siblings, myself included.
During three years of constant learning and improvements, we tested Skiler on a large number of beginners of different ages, abilities, and backgrounds, with excellent results.
Since then, I took over the development side of Skiler, a project that managed to impress many in Slovenia, and now even made its way into the U.S.A.
Ivan Kaštrun, Skiler project manager