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02 01 02. Bringing in the New Year in Style |  |
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Davos .Switzerland |
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The New Years celebrations kicked off
at 6.30pm with a Chinese Fondue (how on earth the Chinese & the
Swiss came together on that one I'll never know...) with a United
Nations of snowboarding. Our table included Photographer Nick Hamilton (FIN), filmer Drew Stevenson (AUS), and rider couples Danny Wheeler and Melanie Leando (UK), Tina Bierbaum (SUI) and Joni Malmi (NOR), and Ile Eronen (FIN) who was still buzzing off the fact that his dislocated elbow had won him a "girlfriend" the previous evening (although I'm not too sure what the Finnish translation for girlfriend is.) At 11pm the pipe session kicked off for the pleasure of both the riders & the crowd of about 4000. We watched, warming ourselves with complimentary hot red bull & vodka, whilst the riders pushed the limits of cruising big with ease. In true Viking style Joni was taking on the pipe & rail in jeans, with super smooth cab 270 board slides 270s off. The Swiss Boy wonders, Olympic Champion Gian Simmen & organiser Dani Costandaché were taking runs together doing huge Ally Oop 540s. The last hit of the pipe took a pounding from German Xaver Hoffman who was flying high with stylish Melon Airs & Danny Wheeler who seemed to be testing every angle of the Haakon flip. With the above riders standing out dramatically from the rest (both with style & volume), talk about town was that they had deliberately invited riders who were traditionally big air or free style riders to emphasise their own pipe prowess. In saying that, Nick mentioned that Joni had ridden the pipe only once last season - and as he won the rider-voted award of "Ruler of the night" with Dani & Gian, that rumour could be just that….a dirty ol' rumour started by those who couldn't hit the pipe like the big boys. The set up of the crowd and pipe was brilliant - when the count down was led by Laughing Gear, all had a clear view of both the riders and Ed & Christian flipping themselves boardless, Afro first into the pipe. As their German was restricted to Ed's porn "Pumpin mine mul Schluka mine faata aaaggghhh" (pump my rubbish chute my father aaaggghhhh") they both reverted to highly successful visual tactics to warm the crowd, i.e. shouting HEEEELLLLLOOOOOO as often as they could & pushing each other off the rail platform. Whatever they did seemed to work as by midnight the crowd was cranked to party. A massive midnight firework display followed, & as it was minus 20 we all headed straight into the tent to get down to the Hip-hop, waving our doo-rags till 6.30am. When I caught myself thinking I was Brittany Spears in front of the hot air blowing machine, I realised the time had come to stumble to the train station and attempt to get home. Jumping the train without a ticket proved to be a mortal sin, as we spent the journey home being reprimanded by an 18-year-old Swiss German boy who had obviously not been thoroughly cleansed of his sins at the SB Jam, as we all had. Sian Hughes. / boarderzone team |
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Davos Website  Air & Style Site |
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