Tomorrow i have a full day of travelling. Starting in Frisco and ending in Valmalenco, Italy for the FIS Junior World Championships.
Training this week went really well and im stoked my preperation for the world class comp!
Dad arrived in Frisco this week and is also coming to Italy with me as Official Australian Team Photographer.
Here’s a few shots he shot of me this week:
Spring has finaly arrived and melted the snow off the roads so i can now skate everywhere rather than walk.
FIS Junior World Champs are in Italy this season and i needed a top 30% result at a Rev Tour to qualify.
My 3rd place from the Mt Snow Rev Tour has qualified me for FIS Junior Worlds which are at the end of this month and im really excited to represent Australia there!
I arrived at Mt Snow, Vermont on Sunday and so far it wasn’t raining which was awesome!
We had pipe practice the next day, which went really well. I was landing my run and was overall happy with the pipe and my riding!
Comp day! The sun was out, the wind was non existant and the pipe was pretty dam good! It was an interesting day i landed my front 5s in practice which i only really started spinning good that week but didnt get to do a flip in warm up so i just thought ill have to give it all ive got in my first run.
My first run was air, air, front 5, air, air, Michalchuk, which scored me a 30 and ranked 3rd in qualifying and made it through to finals where they only took top 6.
My finals run was exactly same, which i landed again and was totally stoked and it scored me a 32 which landed me a spot on the podium in 3rd place!
I was really happy with how the day turned out as I achieved my goal of making finals in the Last rev tour stop and to land on the podium was even better!
10th of March and the day was looking super bad!! really windy, snowing, freezing and just negative conditions to ride in.
But luckily the sun came out and made it an awesome day!
Heres a video i put together of our small ISTC crew that day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo3NUj51VF8
Last week i did another session on the airbag at Vail.
It was a perfect warm sunny day and the pipe wall was a bit soft so it made it really easy to launch off into the bag!
I was mainly working on back 5s and a bunch of switch tricks.
The session was super fun and i was stoked on the awesome day.
We even had the deflate and pack up the airbag!
Heres a video of my cork back 5:
I finally finished editing the video from my trip to boreal featuring myself and Amber Arazny!
Check it out!
A few weeks ago I entered a video contest to try and win 1 of 4 spots for an all expenses paid trip and a spot in the Gatorade Free Flow Tour Finals in Snow Basin, Utah that happened last week. Unfortunately I didn’t win the all expenses paid trip but I did win viewers video choice.
The Gatorade Video competition was partnering with Transworld Snowboarding Magazine and my video is now up on the Transworld Snowboarding Website as one of the winners. I was pretty stoked when I saw it because not many Australian riders have had videos posted on Transworld.
Heres the link to Transworld website and my video entry:
Last week I travelled to Boreal in California for the USSA Revolution Tour. The weather was just like in spring, blue bird and warm which made the trip perfect. We had one day before the comp for practice and to get used to riding the 18-foot pipe.
Comp day went really well. The sun was out and girls were up first! I landed my first run and was stoked, so I put my alleyoop crippler in my second run and landed it so I was even more happy and it bumped my score up to a 19.5 from a 15. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to make finals out of the 25 girls as they only took top 6 but I finished up 10th in my very first Rev Tour and was very happy with that result!
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The next day was the Slopestyle comp which I wasn’t competing in. The sun yet again was out and warm so my team mate Amber Arazny and I spent the whole day having fun filming with her GoPro. I’m still in the process of making our Boreal edit so keep checking back and I should have the edit up soon. Unfortunately we didn’t get any competition footage but we did get some other fun videos in the pipe, park and just some all round footage of our trip away!
Here’s some pics from the trip!
My next comp is the final USASA Nationals qualifier on the 5th of March, so till then I’m just concentrating on training and getting a few more tricks down for my competition run.
This weekend was the second USASA Halfpipe Nationals qualifier @ Copper. It was a picture perfect day with not a cloud in site and was only about 0 degrees Celsius so it was pretty hot!
The comp was delayed an hour as there were some pipe cutter problems and the groomer was still in the pipe when we were meant to be having practice.
The pipe was in pretty good condition and I was loving it. Practice went really well, so I was feeling good about the competition. I landed my first run, which was indy, method, lean air, japan, mute, alleyoop crippler. Then for my second run I switched things up dropping in on the other side and doing method, lean air, japan, front 3, cab 3, alleyoop. I landed both my runs and ended up winning so I was super stoked on the day.
I’ve now qualified for USA Nationals, which are 2nd – 8th of April.
My next upcoming comp is the Rev Tour @ Boreal California on the 10th of Feb, so I’ll be training hard this next week to get a few more tricks down in preparation for the comp.
So I haven’t updated about anything the last 2 weeks since I’ve been back in Colorado so here it all is!
I had my first experience on an air bag at Vail. The set up is like a half pipe and you can train some pretty epic tricks just like you would do them in a pipe. After I got the feeling of the air bag and landing on it I started working on some Crippler 7s. They were pretty easy and it was so much fun training them, I’ll defiantly be spending a lot of time on the air bag through out the season training some bigger tricks. I have some footage from the session that i will soon get off my coach Ben Boyd!
The Following day after the air bag session I started working on some crippler 5s in Brecks pipe. I only had a few attempts but it was a start and I had the right feeling for them, so ill be sure to keep training them so I can add them to my competition run!
The Weekend that just past was the Gatorade Free Flow Tour at Vail. It was a slope and pipe comp, I only competed in the pipe comp. It was a flat light day and the pipe was a weird shape but I spent the whole day before doing laps of the pipe to get used to it ready for the comp. I landed my first run, which consisted of backside air, frontside air, backside air, front 3, cab 3, frontside air and finishing with an alley-oop crippler which I landed and was super stoked about. Then my second run I went a little bigger on my straight airs and went bigger than expected on my front 3 and washed out on the landing and couldn’t finish the rest of my run, so I had to only count my first run which placed me 6th out of the 11 competitors. I was happy about landing my first run, and there is defiantly room for improvement next competition!
Yesterday we received 26 inches of snow. That’s over 2 feet! It was probably one of the sickest powder days I’ve had. I went up to Breckenridge with my buddie from home Amber Arazny and we had a really fun day in the powder. At some stages I was stuck in powder up to my waist and had to dig my self out, it was just an amazing day!
Tomorrow hopefully it doesn’t snow too much and the sun comes out so they can reshape/cut the pipe and we can get back into training.
