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15 12 01. NOKIA AIR & STYLE 2001 |  |
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Seefeld .Austria |
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CONTEST Around 3pm we donned every item of clothing we owned, and headed over to the site of the contest. The temperatures had dropped to minus 20, freezing the cogs in the brain in such a way that we took to swigging as much bluewein (mulled wine) and Schnapps as possible to try & re-start the mice. Ed had left behind our food tickets. I drew the short straw & had to beg "food" off a person who remained unidentifiable sex-wise through the whole evening. The "food" was some kind of Austrian solidified Air biscuit with strands of sticky stuff through it. Nasty. Mellow Constructions had worked 3 weeks with 5 shapers, a mini bulldozer and a snowcat to build the 6 meter high and 7 meter wide corner. The top sheet was about 50cm of ice and the riders were landing with a slap so hard it made my knees ache with empathy. Up above was a 25metre table, which was positioned in such a way that no one could actually see the take-off. Fortunately the 6-metre screen provided a brilliant view of the riders riding in, but sadly that took away from some of the magic that usually comes from watching live snowboarding events. In previous years it had been held down in Innsbruck, in an amphitheatre type set up where-by all the spectators were guaranteed a good view, but in 1999, four girls were killed in a crush when 40,000 people tried to leave the stadium at once. Since then the politics surrounding the event have tainted it a little. This stems partly from rumors that in 2000 Austrian Stefan Gimpl was fixed to win for the 2nd time, giving half his prize money to the charity set up to help the families of the victims. TRICKS Darius Heristchian's backside 540 nose grabs were definately the trick of the night, granting him second place behind Stefan Gimpl who now has a hat trick, winning with Switch frontside 900 Mute. Ingemar Backman came in third with the same trick he used to win in 94 - a backside seven. When Jussi Oksanen, Roger Hjelmstadstuen and David Benedec got knocked out early on, it lost a bit of the flavor that the wicked rider line up had promised. Roger was going for his trade mark fronside ten eighties in the qualifiers but he couldn't put them down cleanly, Jussi appeared to have forgotten his boots and never really looked like a threat despite his switch backside sevens and nines. The style session was my favorite section of the night - where Danny Wheeler stuck an amazingly clean Cab 900, Marc Andre Tarte was throwing down cab 1080's & Heikki Sorsa had the best jump of the weekend with a backside 540. Once again Pauline Richon won the girls section with a super styley backside 540 off the hip.
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Seefeld Austria  Air & Style Site |
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