Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

i went to korea for a world cup. in this short film you can see what its like to snowboard in sungwo, south korea

Air & Style

Bergisel, Innsbruck
02.02.2008

This year the Air & Style came back home to Innsbruck with a Quaterpipe Contest. 2 weeks before the contest i got a call if i want to be a Backup rider for the contest. I had to think about that because i didn’t ride Quaterpipe for more then 3 years. But how could i say no to be part of the home coming from Air & Style!
So i confirmed and on wednesday before the contest they finally told me that i just made it to the main contest. So the pressure was on.

We didn’t really had that much training that we supposed to have because the weather was really warm and they were afraid that the Quaterpipe gets fucked. So i had to go for the Contest with not a lot of training.

To stand up there at the start gate was amazing!! 12.000 people were going crazy in the arena while i was droppin in and hit the quarterpipe with 90 km/h. I was pretty high on the second run and because i did pop a little bit to less i landed on the couping after a 6m Backside Air. So i bruised my right knee. I still did the third run but didn’t really feel it after that slam. I got just 21th but i was really stoked to be part of the Air & Style. It was an amazing expirience with an incredible crowd and „Queens of the Stone Age“ as LiveAct! Siicckkk!!

I had to take 2 weeks off riding to get my knee better again. I went riding after 10 days at the Penken Park and did some jumps while i had a little short landing on a BS 720, i felt the bruise in my knee again.
Anyway i went fort he Check the Ripper on the Seegrube.
 

Also check:

- http://fm4.orf.at/michael/221625                                                 FM4 Report

- http://www.tirol.com/sport/sportmix/innsbruck/76297/index.do            Tirol.com

Check the Ripper

www.nordparksessions.com 

Seegrube, Innsbruck
23.02.2008

Last weekend the Nordpark Sessions took place again on Seegrube in Innsbruck. A Photo Session on Thursday, a night pipe Session on Friday and the Legendary Check the Ripper contest on Saturday. It’s all about finding the best allround shredder.
The setup is a run which includes a kicker, a lot of banks, little bumps and a about 250 meter long and steep freeride slope with about 8 gates for the directions.

The whole thing runs on time. At the kicker you can get up to 12 seconds off your time depending on what trick you do. On my first run i did cab 900 and my time was 01:42:56. That seemed allready pretty good. But i wanted to be faster on my second try. So i did cab 900 again to get a lot of time off. I had a pretty good run. My second run was 4 seconds faster with 01:38:88! I was really stoked espacially because a german tourist crossed my way and i had to scream at him and shred around him.
There was another guy who also did cab 900 on the kicker but he didn’t know his time because someone else crossed the goal line. He said that he didn’t feel to good on his second run. So i thought it could be possible to take the title of the Ripper. I was really stoked and also a lot of other guys said that i won that shit!

So we went to the price giving at 9 pm in the Jimmy’s in Innsbruck. It was unbelieveable. but the other guy really kicked my ass by 0,13 seconds!!!! I couldn’t believe it. So i got 2nd again like i have been last year already! DAMN! Seems like thats life.

And it also seems like i have to go there again next year to try to finally get the Title „The Ripper“!
 

Greets from the Chillertal

Rudi

P.s.: WÄNGL TÄNGL is coming up! Check www.aesthetiker.com 

I made in onto the podium!

That was my goal for this competition because I was so close at my last comp in Korea. And I came 2^nd!

I had some difficulty with the snow changing in qualifying so just scraped through in 13^th position. This meant I had to fight in every heat to get in from the worst start gate.

In my first heat, I was in 4^th going into the first turn, I passed into 3rd going around the 2^nd turn and then into 2nd further down the course, I kept that position the rest of the way down. One girl tried a move to pass me just before the finish but she didn’t manage it.

The second heat was another interesting one, I was in 4^th into the first turn again, the girl in front of me messed up on one of the jumps so I passed her in the following turn which put me in 3^rd. I did the same move just before the finish that the girl had tried to do to me in my last heat but I succeeded where she hadn’t and I got into 2^nd which qualified me for the final!

I got into 3^rd going into the first turn. I had to keep the girl I had passed behind me while trying to catch the 2 in front of me. I passed Lyndsey Jacobellis (Olympic silver medallist) half way down and I held second place the remainder of the course, I got close to the leader (Maelle Ricker) at the end but not quite close enough to pass.

So I got silver! It’s the first time I have been on the podium for a good while and it feels great!

I am off to Lake Placid tomorrow for the next world cup. I have just finished packing.

Only one place further up to go!

Zoe  

P.S. My current world ranking is 4^th.

Roy has got another good international result under his belt with a 2nd place finish in the Engadin Snow. He stomped a switch 7 double tail grab followed by a 180 on 180 off on teh wall ride so congrats to him.

Ulrik is competing this week in the Arctic Challenge after riding in the Arctic Open last week. His riding was so consistent and with a lot of potential to blow up that Terje thought he would be a great addition to TAC. Lets hope he starts throwing down, there was even talk of a double flip, more news to come.

G

Congratulations to Zoe Gillings - she's just proved why she's the UK's number one Snowboardcross athlete by producing her best result of the season.  She finished in 4th place at the FIS World Cup Snowboardcross competition in Sungwoo, Korea. Zoe qualified into the finals in ninth position, and won her first heat convincingly leaving World Number one, Lyndsay Jacobellis trailing behind. The line up in the second heat was particularly tough as it included three of the Worlds top racers, each with World Cup victories under their belts. An extremely focused Zoe didn’t let this faze her and produced yet another great result finishing second and securing her place in the final. In the final it was a head-to-head dual down the technical and demanding course with each rider battling hard for position. Unfortunately being placed in the slowest of the narrow lanes, Zoe was unable to overtake and finished in 4th place, narrowly missing out on a podium position. This is Zoe’s best result in three and a half years and she has now competed in two finals in the past four weeks. Zoe commented after the race, “Its great to be back reaching the finals again, a World cup win is firmly in my sights.”

Results
1st – Maelle Ricker (CAN)
2nd – Lindsey Jacobellis (USA)
3rd – Mellie Francon (SUI)
4th – Zoe Gillings, (UK)

Well done Zoe :)  

I have spoken to some of the guys in the team and its all go at the moment.

Rich is just back from japan and has been shooting in chatel and has some grreat shots including a rude boy double backflip in the backcountry. He is now on his way over to Austria to the Red Bull Playstreets before continuing his filming with Rage films who are coming over to Europe for a couple of weeks.

Andreas has been in colorado training and doing some park filming, he has not had too many days shooting due to the horizontal snow however the sessions he has got have been killer. Every day for the rest of the season is now booked up with tonnes of filming so its going to be super hectic but loads of fun. A big shout out to Andreas and Jon who have been with Mirjam over in colorado making her recovery as easy as possible after she bust her ACL in the US Open final but still took second.

Henning is also going under the knife this week after getting fast tracked up the waiting list for the operation to get his ankle better. He has used this opportunity to get his school work up to date and is one of the judges for the Norwegian Atric challenge qualifier. If you are over at the Artic challenge then you will definitely see Henning hanging around taking notes so that he can come back and blow minds next year.

Gary and sophie and continually on the comp circuit and are heading over to Calgary for the World cup at the end of the month before the world Superpipe champs in Park City and the US Open. In between this gary has to shoot his sweetspot which is shaping up to be a big adventure into the unknown...fingers crossed but I think its going to be sick.

Ulrik has been filming hard with Factor films and has already stuck a backside 10 and heelside rodeo 7 in the backcountry so a grreat start, he is now back in Mayrhofen on the best kicker line he has ever ridden to put down some big lines. Stoked that it is coming together although he did manage to lose his filmer for a short period of time but thats Ulrik.

Mati and Laurent are off on a major adventure down in Nepal for their sweetspot and it is going to be a beauty but you are going to have to check out the website for when it goes live as it will be a world first.

I am back at home after a month on the road and catching up with the backlog of e-maiils, the season is going great and whenever I talk to anyone they are having a lot of fun with all the snow, long may it continue and I cant wait to get the shredstick back on.

 cheers

G

The US Open finished with a bang for Nike ACG in 2 ways, we got our first podium with Mirjam taking her second silver medal in 2 weeks and only just missing out on first place with Jess Cummings beating her with her last run. The down side is that on Mirjam's last trick of her third run she took an awkward fall and tore her ACL ligament.

Mirjam has remained in Colorado to get her operation this week so she can start the recovery process as soon as possible and the doctors over there are fantastic so we wish her a speedy recovery and hope that she can come back even stronger than the incredible form she has been in this season, a podium in every contest she has entered.

have a good recovery,

team ACG