Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

The UK team have been representing over the past few days. Accross pipe, slopstyle and SBX they've been killing it!


Dan Wakeham Shows Early Promise in Saas Fee
Dan's nerve was tested this weekend by bad luck and poor conditions in Saas Fee for the opening Nokia FIS World Cup Half-pipe of the season. However, Dan can be more than pleased with what he has achieved over the past few days.

On Dan's second day of competition (Friday) saw him back to form as he put down some really competitive runs in qualifying. In fact, his best score of 33.1 was good enough to qualify him in 3rd place in his heat and guarantee him a spot in the finals on Saturday.

Dan was very much looking forward to going head to head with the likes of Risto Mattilla and Marrku Koski on Saturday but woke to find high winds had closed the mountain. It was a real blow to contend with as Dan had seemingly been guaranteed at least a top 12 finish at the event a day earlier but the results were scrapped altogether with the cancellation of the finals.

Needless to say, Dan is upbeat about his performance. Amongst a highly competitive field he has once again underlined his credentials. According to Dan “it was a good start for the competitive season for me and it has filled me with confidence as I go in to my next event which is the world championships”.


Padski Lays It Down in Les Diablerets and Bags Fall Line Cover
Paddy Graham, British Half-pipe champion, has just savaged some of the fiercest competition out there to win the Monster Park Open Jam in Les Diablerets, Switzerland.

… and he’s bagged the cover of Fall Line Skiing this month too!

This is Paddy’s second international slopestyle title, having won the Polish Open last season as well.

Paddy beat off some outstanding competition with a variety of tricks that would have done him proud on a one hit Big Air event, let alone a slopestyle course.

His line off the kickers included a switch cork 7 true tail - switch cork 5 nose - bio 7 rev mute - bio 9 rev mute on the step up.

Paddy travelled to across from Laax having just heard he'd bagged the cover of the latest Fall Line. He also has a centre spread with more stunning shots from his trip to New Zealand in August.

It won't stop there though, on the back of his success over the weekend Paddy has been asked back to Diablerets next week to shoot with Weski Mag. He's also going to fit in the Jib Night in Verbier on 9th December.

Also in attendance was fellow Nike ACG rider Angus Leith, mixing it up amongst the snowboarders. Angus put down some great runs to qualify for the final which was eventually won by Tonton Holland.


Zoe Gillings Sets The Pace in Kaprun SBX
Rounding off an outstanding weekend for the Nike ACG team, Zoe Gillings has been back on the podium having competed at the SBX Europa Cup event in Kaprun, Austria.

With the World Cup season yet to start, Zoe has been biding her time to get into a competitive race and led the British field over in Austria this weekend. Zoe’s eagerness to get back into race mode was never in any doubt as she posted by far and away the quickest time in qualifying for the knockout stages. She was half a second quicker than her closest competitor in a field that mainly comprised of World Cup athletes.

Zoe eased her way through the knockout stages by winning her first two heats with relative ease.

In the final she set herself a target of getting to the front of the field by the first section of the course in order to save herself from possible injury and tangles with other competitors. When it didn’t fall into place for her she shadowed the front two runners and coasted across the line in third.

The following day had a secondary race but Zoe was rested with her pace having been confirmed and good health in mind.

Zoe’s very much looking forward to the World Cup season kicking off. The next stop is Bad Gastein, Austria on 14th / 15th December for 2 World Cup Events.

It was the Winterjam in Stockholm ( www.winterjam.se ) over the weekend and it was a great event for the Nike ACG team.

Friday was the big air ski event and we had a pretty good base of riders with Andreas Hatveit, Richard Permin, Roy Kittler, Martin Misof and our new young prodigy from Norway Thomas Dølplads, who ripped and blew everyone away for his first big contest.



The event was called the ‘King of Style’ and the judges made it clear they were looking for style ahead of rotation.
 

 

Richard was determined from the start of the day and it showed in his face as you can tell!!

However you needed to be doing stylie 10’s to make the final. Even Jon Olssens double Lincoln Loop to switch (which has been perfected over summer in a water jump and he now puts down perfect every time) was not rated by the judges and he made the final only by a wildcard (home town favourite!!) entry.

Roy was bummed not to make the final but rode exceptional for his first major big air contest and has a big future no question.

The Nike ACG Team ended up with 4 of the final 8 qualified entries to the first final and after the first round of jumps we placed 1- 4. However, after the second jump, it was Andreas and Richard who made it to the ‘super-final’ with Sammy Carlson and Jon Olssen (who kept doing the same trick – not rated in the early rounds but with the TV cameras rolling for some reason it was getting points!) His entry edged out Martin to 5th so with good reason, Martin was pissed right off as he was riding amazing, going bigger than anyone all day and deserved to be in the final four. Here's martin going massive as he was all day.

 

 
Our new rookie Thomas Dølplads came 6th overall so before the super final Nike had a guaranteed 4 of the top 6th places.
In the super final, Richard and Andreas kept stomping everything and either could have won except for Sammy Carlson leaving his best amplitude and style to last and rinsing the final field on his last 2 jumps. 

We were all stoked for Richard especially as it was his best placing in a field of this calibre and will set him up for X Games entry and hopefully a bigger and even better career from now on.

 


 
Results from King of Style 10:th of November
king of Style: SAMMY CARLSON
2:nd: Richard Permin Nike ACG
3:rd: Andreas Håtveit Nike ACG
4:th: Jon Olsson
5:th: Martin Misof Nike ACG
6:th: Thomas Dølplads Nike ACG
7:th: Peter Olenick
8:th: Niklas Karlström
9:th: Charles Garnier
10th:Taisuke Kusunoki


Saturday was snowboarding big air and part of the Nokia FIS series. Nike ACG had Flo Mausser riding for the Austrian team. Again in the snowboarding, it was a world class field. Flo was riding in top form from the outset despite the crap weather...he just had to keep uping the ante as the riding from the rest of the field improved over the course of the day. But Flo was well up to the task stomping 9's and 10's in the final with perfect grabs and amplitude. At the end Flo finished forth in a field of over 80 of Europe and the worlds best.

Flo was stoked on his 4th. His next event is the Nokia big air in Paris early december.



1:st: PETEK MATEVZ
2:nd Peetu Piiroinen
3:rd Risto Mattila
4:th Florian Mausser Nike ACG
5:th Andreas Wiig
6:th Stefan Gimpl
7:th Giacomo Kratter
8:th Benedikt Nadig

Both events had pretty good after-parties. An amazingly high proportion of Swedish girls are stunners so the Nike ACG team had a couple of great nights and look forward to heading back to next years event.

Well the team headed out to Les 2 Alpes, France, for the Mondial over the last 9 days to experience some early season bonding, a bit of snowboarding and a lot of boozing. The first weekend was the mondial du snowboard and it was a total blow out with some serious drinking taking place – especially after Ulrik Badertscher won the snowboard contest.

We also had an acg BBQ during the week and fluked it big style with the weather and the whole crew had a great time hanging out – it was beautiful so the football came out and after watching the French crew playing for 10 minutes it was clear to see why Scotland beat them recently in the European championships qualifier. The food went down well, especially in the case of Andreas who quite literally finished anything that was left over, he’s a growing boy and keen to age over that 100kg mark.

Randomly enough we ended up with a pussy in our chalet for 5 days which provided a good bit of amusement although not for Martin Misof who spent his nights warding off sharp claws and fearing for his eyes
but it was a big softy really. Gary knows how to handle a pussy, look at him go, he’s a natural, never seen him look so happy.  

 

 

 

Dan wakeham before  Dan wakeham after

 

 

 

 

  

Contest Reports

Burton Highway to Rail Contest – Mondial du Snowboard
Nike ACG were represented well in the first major rail contest of the season with riders such as Henning Marthinsen (NOR) and Gary Zebrowski (FRA) on the invited list and all 3 spots from the qualification event going to Nike ACG riders also, Ulrik Baderstcher (NOR), Gulli Gudmundsson (ICE) and Truls Berg (NOR). The rail setup in the heart of the Les 2 Alpes village looked good with the option of a 3 or 4 metre acid drop to start your run followed by the option of 6 different boxes down the stair set up. All of the boxes were used in an exciting contest, the biggest cheers of the day going to Ulrik Baderstcher who was performing technical tricks such as 50-50 to frontflip to 50-50 on the up down box – a trick that was stylish and dangerous with a nasty drop on the other side of the box. After an exhilarating qualification round the top five riders were picked to go onto a super final:

Ulrik Baderstcher
Henning Marthinsen
Mathieu Crepel
Nico Droz
Eero Ettala

Each rider had 3 runs with the best one counting as their score. The riders were pulling out the stops and Ulrik thrilled the crowd again with his acrobatics however he failed to stick it clean while other riders like Eero Ettala put down his switch fs tailslide to Danish 270 out putting him in the early lead. Henning Marthinsen who stuck his trick (cab 450 to 270 off) cleanly in the qualifier did not quite manage to land it clean leaving him in 4th place however Ulrik stepped it up in his final run to do a perfect backside 450 to 270 out leaving him clearly in 1st place ahead of the best riders in the world. You will be seeing a lot more of Ulrik over the coming years.


Rossignol Century Contest – Mondial du ski
Once again Nike ACG was well represented with Andreas Hatveit, Roy Kittler and Richard Permin receiving an invite to compete against the best riders around on the mondial rail set up in Les 2 Alpes. Ridiculously technical tricks were being thrown down by Andreas and Roy with switch and normal 630’s onto the rail being common place and then they both even managed to sneak a 270 out as well. Richard was being super stylish as usual both on the rails and on the gap kicker pulling some lovely switch 7’s. The highlight of the day for me was Andreas’ backflip double nosegrab which got the crowd going wild, I was hoping for the trick that I want to push as his signature move – the backflip double true tail – a truly magnificent move which may limit his movement in
future years. Check out his backflip at the Mondial du Ski below:

The Final was upon us and around 8 riders went through including Roy and Andreas, by this point Andreas had stepped it up with 270’s onto the kinked rail with switch ups on the kink and 270’s out. He looked to me like the clear winner but some super tech tricks on the down box put Franck from Quebec into first place. It was a great show which I thoroughly enjoyed even if my kneecaps were bouncing up and down like a jack hammer. Check out some footage of Andreas below:

The rest of the Mondial was no disappointment and left us all feeling suitably hungover during the following days, Mati Imbert had to sleep for 15 hours just to feel remotely human again.

The whole team had a wicked time both on the mountain and in the bar so heres looking forward to next year’s edition and best wishes to all the crew who are competing in Stockholm this coming weekend.