Thursday, February 01, 2007

X Games Round Up

So another year has come and gone, and as usual there were ups and downs, movers and shakers, and of course, the best exhibition of freestyle snowboarding and skiing on the planet.

With Seven riders competing across our teams in comparison to 1 last year, we were stoked going into this years X Games. Read below how our guys and girls got on .....

Snowboarding:

Nike ACG riders Gary Zebrowski and and Zoe Gillings were participating in the mens superpipe and womens Snowboard X respectively. Gary finished 18th in undoubtledly the strongest field of pipe riders on the planet. It is remarkable how much bigger the Americans go in the pipe and this was illustrated bythe fact that the first six riders in the finals were all American.

Zoe was unfortunate not t0 qualify for the final, coming 5th in her semi. Her return to form was marked by her victory in the consolation final, placing her 7th overall. We expect to see bigger things from Zoe in the rest of the season. Catch her on the 17th Feb out in Japan riding in the FIS World Cup.


Flight Zoe Gillings (right) comes into land.

It was up to the members of our Nokia Team to prove themselves in this intimidating field of riders and Mathieu Crepel, a legend on this side of the pond did not disappoint, but could not recreate the form which saw him win the overall TTR accolade last year. Mathieu came 5th in the slopestyle and 9th in the superpipe, aswell as being knocked out in the quarters by Danny Davis.

Hampus Mosesson qualified for the final of the mens slopestyle and finished 9th. On a course which caused some or of the European riders some difficulties, Hampus competed with real drive and was unlucky to come away in 9th. He fared slightly better in the Best Trick and like his team mate Mathieu, was knocked out in the quater finals after throwing some huge 10's, but failing to reach the semis. In the end he was knocked out by the eventual winner Andreas Wiig, whose gold in the slopestyle had given him a real boost of confidence and he was untouchable once again in this event.

Hampus during the mens slopestyle. (Photo credit: EXPN.com)


Skiing


As the sole Nike ACG competitor at last years event, Andreas Hatveit was joined by those mentioned above aswell as Mirjam Jaeger and Rich Permin in the skiing events. Andreas againwas the most succesful, finishing 4th in the mens superpipe and 7th in the Slopestyle. Alongside Candide Thorax and Jon Olsson, Andreas stands up as the other standard bearer of European freeskiing. He's still young and we expect to see him killing it again at next years event.

Andreas pops out of the pipe during training.
(Photo credit EXPN.com)

For Mirjam, her qualifying runs inthe pipe were flawless and in the final she was beaten by a very strong field and finished up in 5th.


Mirjam after her final run in Aspen


Rich Permin, fresh from his victory at the Tignes Airwaves, competed in the slopestyle and finished up in 14th place.

For more info and further results go to http://expn.go.com/expn/winterx/2007/index?event=wx11

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