Weeks are flying by and it seems like the start of winter has now been replaced with mid-winter storms and travels around the globe. January flew by with a couple of trips to Europe and a trip to Aspen for the ESPN Winter X Games.
The trip to Aspen proved to be quite the eye opener for me. Every year the level of riding progresses, and the X Games is definitely one of the contests that showcased this increase in performance. This year proved to be one of the most jaw dropping spectacles of them all in the women’s snowboarding events.
Watching the women at X Games was a testament that anything is possible. The women’s halfpipe final was the cherry on top at the weeklong competition. These girls showed that women’s snowboarding is gearing up to be one of the highlights of the circuit.
Torah Bright, Kelly Clark, and Gretchen Bleiler threw down in a night finals show like no other. All three ladies had extremely different runs, and all three deserved gold in my mind. Torah’s enormous technical run was laced with tricks like huge Mctwists, lofty and stylish air-to-fakies, cab 720s, and the ever-so-technical switch backside 720 to end her amazing runs. Kelly’s run demonstrated that the sky is the limit. She was blasting 15-foot airs with enormous 540 combos and a massive 900 at the bottom. Kelly even attempted some 1080s in the last two runs but couldn’t quite muscle out the landings. Power and speed set Kelly’s riding over the top.
Gretchen impressed with some amazing runs as well. She started off with huge 900s, jaw dropping cripplers, technical ally-oops, and finished with back-to-back 720s. WOW. This was definitely not a night to be a judge.
After much deliberation, Gretchen was crowned halfpipe queen that night. Torah ended up in second and Kelly took the bronze.
The women’s slopestyle was equally exciting to watch. Jamie Anderson was victorious with a stylish cab 720 over the last booter into the finish. B.C. girl Spencer O’Brien grabbed the bronze medal in that event.
The snowboardcross course proved once again to be a drafting and gliding race on Buttermilk Mountain — a course I couldn’t get the hang of to save my life. After barely qualifying for the finals I had my work cut out from the get-go. Last lane pick in a six-person start is not exactly ideal. I ended up doing okay off the start — actually it was the only part of the course that treated me with some respect.
My semi-final heat had the top four riders in the world in the start gate. Dominique Maltais dominated time trials and also held her own in the finals. Her smooth gliding style worked well down the course as she blew by me in the mid-section. Lindsay Jacobellis also did the same. I had the third place position over the last jump but couldn’t hang on to my landing. To the small finals I went.
Dominique went through to the big show and almost won the event. She was passing Lindsay on the last step-up before the finish but couldn’t keep her feet under her for the landing of the jump. Unfortunately this mistake placed her in forth overall.
After a quick pack of the cars, we left Aspen and headed straight to Europe for another World Cup stop in Leysin, Switzerland. Here the only event to take place was a snowboardcross.
Mike Robertson of Canmore worked himself all week, but hung into the finals for his best performance in a World Cup event. He made finals but had a bad pull out the gate. Again, Mike had to make some crazy passes in order to be on the podium.
Unfortunately it wasn’t Mike’s day. He took another beating in a tricky “S” turn section and had to settle for fourth in the end, one spot shy of his first ever World Cup podium. Next time Mikey!
After that it was back to North America. This time the team decided to split up and do some different events. Our boys went to Squaw Valley for a Jeep King of the Mountain pro event. Drew Neilson took fourth and Shawn Palmer managed another victory for the old guys. Tom Velisek won the small finals and ended up fifth. They then headed up to Tamarack in Idaho for the U.S. Nationals. Again, Tommy was fifth.
While the boys were accumulating air miles down south, Rob Fagan and I drove to Mt. Baker for my beloved Banked Slalom event. Because of the ridiculous amounts of new snow that fell all week, the freeriding proved to be the highlight of our visit.
The time before the race, during the race, and after the race were all filled with powder slashing and high fives.
The banked slalom course itself was a bit of a foggy nightmare. Vision was affecting everyone in the finals. Rob was second in the men’s pro category and I managed to win the girls event. This was a perfect week to lead up into our next road trip to the Orient.
All three teams will be competing in Korea and Japan in the next couple of weeks. Let’s hope we can bring home some hardware, and more smiling faces from face shots in that Japanese powder.
