Tom Pro is a genuine legend in Whistler, and the global bike community, so it was a treat to profile him for Interstellar Mountain Culture magazine, because honestly, I wish I could sometimes say to the next generation of mountain culture and resort leaders: be more like Pro. Here’s the profile:

Tom Prochazka speaks several languages – English, Czech, and passable German. Still, he’s most fluent in “flow”, a lingua franca that transcends barriers, builds bridges and has helped turn a rogue backwoods practice into a global community. 

Prochazka is one of the critical shapers of lift-assisted mountain biking. At 68, 17 years after spinning it off from under the umbrella of Whistler Blackcomb, he and his colleagues at Gravity Logic are as busy as ever, designing mountain bike parks around the world. The current count is around 40 parks and trail centres in a dozen countries. Last year, they had ten projects on the go at one time.  

“Just don’t make it sound like I did it all by myself.”

Tom Prochazka

But Pro was never afraid to say, what about the kids? What about the women? 

“The Whistler Bike Park is successful because everybody can ride it. Most of us wanted to ride extreme trails, but it’s important it’s welcoming to everyone.” Instead of thinking of mountain biking as an elite secret fraternity, Gravity Logic and the Whistler Mountain Bike Park drew inspiration from skiing, the business they knew best.

“I can read lines. When I design a trail, I’m thinking of skiing. Ski racing gives you a really good eye for line.”

Tom Prochazka

A retired World Cup speed skier, Prochazka moved to Whistler in the early 90s with his wife Claire and newborn son, shifting gears from chasing the circuit, and stockbroking or fishing all summer, to settling somewhere you could raise a family. He ran a small sawmill and coached skiing, and rode one of the first full suspension mountain bikes, having already spent 10 years exploring the infamous Vancouver North Shore on rigid bikes. 

When Whistler Blackcomb was looking for a new Bike Park manager, they tapped Prochazka for the job. He played this role for7 seasons, before Gravity Logic spun off into an independently-owned park design compan. He took what they’d learned to “grow the flow” and advised other resorts on how to turn their ski runs into mountain bike parks.  

While many hours are logged on his laptop, Prochazka is a boots-on-the-ground worker, often standing beside an excavator operator translating his understanding of dirt, line and flow, into theirs. “I’ve got pretty heavy-duty boots. It’s a lot of walking in the bush and looking for terrain you can build through. By the time I do a conceptual map, I’ve walked every square metre of a hill.”

Whether it’s his family, his Czech roots, or all that time reading dirt through the soles of his feet, Tom Prochazka is one of the most down-to-earth legends that Whistler, and the global mountain bike community, has. 

There’s some community-builder gene baked into his DNA. A casual snowmobiling outing will turn into a 20-person party – Pro welcomes everyone and their mother, girlfriend, or son. He gathers people around him like he is the campfire, a kind of radiant energy source, handing out the beers (he always has more than he needs in the truck), and cajoling people into being part of something bigger than themselves.

Pro happened to be in Whistler in a pioneering moment for mountain biking. “There was no pushback, nothing was impossible, everyone was enthusiastic,” he recalls. He was the right guy in the right place at the right time.

But I can’t help but think that his way of being in the world helped shape what would come in mountain biking. Generous-hearted, inclusive, and able to get potential adversaries on side, he’s won over liability lawyers, European farmers and hunters, Italian backhoe operators, and US government hydrologists – because he treats everyone with genuine interest, puts effort into relationships, and doesn’t squander trust. “You build trust by building something that makes people go ‘Wow!’” 

A well-designed trail wins everyone over. And flow says it all.

Photos by Robin O’Neill.