Geri
Tumbasz
Teaching with Concept
I told my mother I was going to be a ski instructor when I was eight years old.
I was living in Hungary. We had small hills, no snow and no money for the kind of travel that a serious ski career would have required. By twelve I wanted to be a ski racer — the way most kids who love skiing do — and briefly, I also wanted to be a rock star drummer. I was not short of ambition. I was short of mountains. I never fully stopped playing drums either — some things stay with you.
What I had instead was grass skiing. From fourteen to eighteen I competed in FIS Grass Ski Racing — World Championships, international point races, travelling across Europe on a circuit that almost nobody outside the discipline has ever heard of. It gave me the movement education of a competitive racer combined with the technical foundation of an instructor in training. Those two things running in parallel shaped how I understand skiing at a level I could not have arrived at any other way.
I was thirteen years old. My answer was immediate: Deal. He made it sound not just possible but obvious. That conversation is the reason I am writing this page.
My first ski school in Austria — the first ever opened by a Hungarian in the country — was in Maria Alm. The same mountain where it all started on that very first instructor preparation course, at thirteen years old.
Teaching with Concept
There is nothing new under the sun. The methods I use — I learned them. Separately, across thirty seasons, in twelve countries, from coaches and athletes and situations that each taught me something different. What I built is a concept — a way of connecting those approaches into a system that makes the learning clearer, faster and less frightening. I struggled enough on my own way to understand what the obstacles feel like from the inside. If I can make the path easier for someone else — that is the most satisfying thing in this work.
Before skiing took over completely I also qualified as a preschool teacher — a background that turns out to be more relevant to coaching adults than most people expect. Breaking complex movement into simple steps, reading people quickly, adapting on the fly. The skills transfer more than you would think.
"Top trainer! Personal, lots of humor and good feedback. Definitely recommended if you want to bring your skiing technique to a higher level!"
From Maria Alm to the Staatlicher Exam
At sixteen I passed the Hungarian Ski Instructor qualification and had to wait two years for my licence because the minimum age was eighteen. At twenty-one I went to Italy for the first time as a professional — not as a tourist, as a freelancer. A travel agency needed someone who could guide Hungarian clients through an Italian ski resort, handle the logistics, organise their days and teach them to ski. Nobody in an Italian ski school spoke Hungarian. I did. I organised my own days, managed my own clients, ran my own programme and tried to make a living from all of it. I was twenty-one and I was already a freelancer. Looking back, everything I have built since follows the same instinct.
From that point the climbing started. Not because I had a detailed plan — I never had a detailed plan — but because there was always a next level and I always wanted to reach it. Hungary was not yet a member of the European Union when I began, which meant certain qualifications were closed to me. So I turned to Austria — and the Austrian system, once I was inside it, became the framework for everything that followed.
The climb continued until I found myself preparing for the Austrian Staatlicher selection — the entry point for the highest coaching certification in the Austrian ski system. Level 4. The ceiling. The goal for years had been simple: some day, get into that course.
When the day came — when they read the names of the candidates who had passed the selection — I sat in my car and realised for the first time in my career I had reached the door I had been walking toward for twenty years. The first person I called was László Szabó.
"Strict, demanding, consequent with a bit of puerility. That's how I've learned skiing at a high level."
5+ Congresses.
Four Countries.
Two Demo Teams.
The Interski Congresses gave me something no qualification course could — direct access to the people who shaped the science and philosophy of ski technique across the last half century.
Over those congresses I had the privilege of meeting Fritz Baumrock — ski theory scientist and author whose books on teaching methods influenced a generation of coaches — Arno Klien, Reinhard Fischer, one of the pioneers of the shaped carving ski, and Hans Zehetmayer. People whose contribution to ski science most recreational skiers will never know by name but feel in every carved turn they make.
That access — to the thinking behind the technique, to the people who developed it — is not something you get from a course. It comes from being in the room. Being in that room, repeatedly, across twenty years, is one of the things I am most grateful for in this career.
Eight Seasons as Trainer and Examiner
Shortly after completing Level 4, a door opened — the kind that opens because you are in the right place at the right time. I joined Snowsports Academy Austria under Richard Berger as a rookie trainer and stayed for more than eight seasons — as trainer, examiner and L3 Course Leader across Europe. Those seasons taught me things that no qualification course could: how to assess a skier honestly, how to train coaches rather than just skiers, and how to hold a standard and communicate it clearly to people working at the edge of their ability.
Russia · Georgia · Japan · China · South Korea
USA · New Zealand · Argentina
In New Zealand I work every Southern Hemisphere winter with the Rookie Academy at Treble Cone — one of the finest ski coaching organisations in the country.
In China I have been involved in ski resort development on a project that took me there several seasons ago and brought me back in January 2025 — terrain planning, slope geometry, ski school system design and staff training for a major resort expansion that is currently under construction. I hope it continues. It is one of the most significant long-term projects of my career.
Resort Development & Instructor Training
Terrain planning, slope geometry, ski school system design and instructor training — building the foundations of a skiing culture from the ground up.
"Top trainer! Personal, lots of humor and good feedback. Definitely recommended if you want to bring your skiing technique to a higher level!"
"Strict, demanding, consequent with a bit of puerility. That's how I've learned skiing at a high level."
"Geri is by far the best Telemark instructor you can book for your course. Professional service and full dedication to his clients."
Cold Candy Snow School and Academy
Together with my business partner Wouter Kuit, I run Cold Candy Snow School and Academy at the Kitzsteinhorn glacier in Kaprun. We manage the mogul field, run camps across the season and build the kind of coaching environment I always wanted access to as a skier — structured, expert, honest and genuinely focused on improvement.
The camps on this site are the product of everything above. Thirty seasons of learning, coaching, examining and competing — distilled into programmes that give serious skiers the same quality of technical support that elite athletes have always taken for granted. We run Cold Candy with one clear goal: real improvement, done properly — and still with lots of fun.
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Questions about the camps, the coaching or whether any of it is right for your skiing — I answer personally.
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