Gaz Wessman Vogan

A short story about Gaz.

TL;DR I've judged 2 Winter Olympics and 3 World Championships, commentated at an Olympics and 2 World Championships, travelled the world to 28 countries, met my soulmate, moved to a new country, all whilst maintaining a successful digital media brand.

I'm British - which is an odd nationality for someone so involved in and passionate about snowboarding - Britain isn't exactly renowned for its mountains. Nonetheless, I picked up snowboarding as a hobby through riding at snow domes and dry slopes around the country, every single week from the age of 12 through to 18 when I went to University.

I studied Marketing at Loughborough University, left with a degree and started working in digital marketing at Snowsport England. On the side, I got into snowboard judging, and started to travel a bit each winter to various snowboard contests.

Then came the sticking point - I suddenly was getting offered more competitions than I had days of Annual Leave at the company. I left my full-time position, to enter the world of Freelancing - balancing the marketing and the snowboarding worlds simultaneously.

I started out primarily in social media marketing, managing clients social channels, running ad campaigns and liaising with professionals around content. Covid then hit, and I took the opportunity to diversify into content creation. Snowboarding and content creation have gone hand-in-hand for decades, so naturally I already had a baseline in creating videos - I just worked to modernise and professionalise those skills.

And then I discovered drones and the unique perspectives they offered. I was hooked.

Whilst this was all going on, I was still rising through the world of professional Snowboard Judging, eventually judging at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. In this period, I also got invited into the commentary booth at Eurosport to be their expert analyst for the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2019 World Championships - and this is where my commentary career was born.

I took some time away from judging after the 2022 Winter Olympics, to join Planet X Bikes, managing their content team for both their product brands (Planet X, Titus, On-One, Holdsworth) and events brand (Marauder Events). I utilised my media skills to re-position these individual brands, grew their online following to double or triple the size, and further developed my own content creation skills.

I was then fortunate enough to meet my wife, I moved to Norway (my favourite country) to live with her, judged the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, continued my commentary career, started a podcast, and focused my marketing and media career on aerial photography and cinematography.

And that's my story.

When digital marketing met snowboarding.