Nike ACG European Team Update

You will be delighted to hear that I have another great report to give you all, the team have been representing well throughout the world with the results coming in thick and fast.

Mirjam Jaeger

Mirjam has finished second overall in the FIS World Cup skiing Halfpipe tour which finished in Canada 2 weeks ago. We are really happy that she has managed to put this result together and hopefully she can go the whole way next year. To back up this result she also reached the final of the Orage European Open Halfpipe in Laax last week, the last major contest for her this winter. This means she has put together some great results this season putting ACG well and truly on the map for woman’s skiing.

Jukka Eratuli

After being injured for a couple of weeks Jukka is back riding as strong as ever. His first contest was in Estonia where he won the rider of the night title in front of a huge inner city crowd. Since then he has been filming and shooting hard starting in Helsinki which received a large amount of snow a couple of week and allowed him to get shots in factories and even managing a powder turn on the roof. He is now working over in the States and Canada (Pleasure Mag photoshoot) with the Storbis crew filming for his section of their movie this year which will be going out on the cover of Onboard next winter and this month Jukka was the featured rider in the Onboard showroom which shows off the riders kit in detail which is more great PR for ACG.

Andreas Hatveit
Andreas has been filming hard in Norway since he came back from his rib injury a couple of weeks ago. He has been getting the rail shots in the bag and went up to the north of Norway to shoot with a couple of the other ACG riders and they got some great stuff for the ACG DVD. His schedule from now until the end of May is full with photoshoots with Poor Boyz Productions (a top US production company), ACG and various invitational comps in France, Sweden and Canada.

Roy Kittler
Roy has been on fire the last week or 2 with his second consecutive victory in the Snowpark Tour – which earned him a place in the semi-final of the European Open Slopestyle and in the next Nokia Totally Board invitational which might be somewhere in Asis. With his place in the semi’s of the European Open already guaranteed it meant that Roy could concentrate on his run and he qualified through to the final in a truly world class field of skiers, he finished 11th, and was one of only 5 skiers in the contest to spin all 4 directions (both ways forward then both ways switch).

ACG was the best represented brand in the final of the first Orage European Open with 3 riders, Roy Kittler, Richard Permin and Martin Mishof showing the true depth and standard the ACG team has to offer. Martin Mishof finished 7th and Richard Permin earned himself a 6th place finish with a great run. Richard also was up in Norway filming with Andreas for 10 days and got some great shots both on rails and backcountry, Richard is a rider with great potential who has progressed a lot this season.

Flo Mausser
Flo has been based in Austria for the last couple of weeks after a failed trip to get to Russia for the last Big Air world cup (his flight was grounded in Frankfurt for 20 hours so he missed the contest) – this meant that he finished 4th overall in the FIS Big Air World Cup (a position that he had hoped to improve with a good result in Russia.

He has also been representing ACG in various photoshoots, the Monster Backside shoot in Oberstorf and the Blue Tomato shoot next week. In addition to that he has had a look at his footage from this year and he has over 130 seconds of stomped tricks for the DVD and his section in next years Fat Gypsy Production.

He is currently on his way to film in the Arlberg again after reaching the semi’s in the Wangl Tangl last weekend (a comp which he won last year) and he will head to the Spring Battle next weekend.

PG Conrardy
I have not heard from PG for a couple of weeks as he has been over in Pakistan for 2 weeks filming with a French crew for a magazine and video. It is a trip of a lifetime and I can report more once he has filled me in on how it went.

Mati Imbert
Has been based in France and has been filming and shooting in his home resort of Risoul. Currently he is working on setting up an end of season photoshoot there which would specifically be for ACG and should provide us with some great images. Mati will be heading over to BC, Canada with Sverre and Henning at the start of April to do some heli riding and get the final shots we need to complete the DVD. They have had great snow over there so far this season so lets hope it holds out.

Sverre Liliequist
For the last 2 weeks Sverre has been out of touch up in the North of Norway with his Swedish Posse getting as much freeride filming done as possible. He returned last night to Sweden where he is going to base himself until he heads to Canada (due to the lack of snow and high temperatures around Europe at the moment).

Flo Kofer

Flo is one of our Austrian freeriders who took a bad injury a few weeks ago, he has just dropped me a line to say that his knee is getting better and better and he is trying to get his summer trip to Argentina and Chile off the ground.

Jaime Puidengoles
Jaime was another of our injured soldiers who is on the mend and has plans to head over to the states to go filming in tahoe from the 4th-12th April. He has been working his riding in with his Uni work this year and has great plans for next year when he hopefully has more time on his hands.

As usual, if I have missed anything out please feel free to let me know.

Graham