Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

Hey everybody

just wanted you all to know that i had been in Austria for the weekend to take part in the Newschoolpicknick(one of the biggest comps in whole europe after the european open...) and the X-Override!

everything started of on friday, when we started our trip in Schönried(near by Gstaad, Switzerland).
there was a huge snowstorm and about 20cm of snow on the highway, the traffic was crazy and we already needed 2hours 
then usually to get to Bern, so we decided to go back home and ski some pow, but when we had been home already i got a call from a friend and he said that it´s supposed to be good weather i Austria and no big snowstorms at all....

so we turned after 1,5h of an detour and went to St. Gallen to pick up Henrik Harlaut and Kalle Leinonen....
we arrived in Austria at 2am in the night....after good 13h of driving....luckily the comp on saturday was just starting at 11am....


after 1h of training things started of and everybody got 2runs, and out of the 2 the best one counts, i made it to semis with a smooth sw7 mute to tail, while everybody else was busting sw 10s...
at 7pm we came back up to take the training...the kicker was just 14m of flat but really poppy and a huge, step landing, so everybody could go really really big as u can see in the picture...

16people had made it to semi finals! the concept stayed the same like in qualis, and 8people advanced to finals...
i got 7th with a sw10 mute to opposite tail, which i just learned in training...everybody else was going huge and busted super stylie sw10s...

the finals went down as a head to head system were the 8th had to go againts the 1st, 7th/2nd, 6th/3rd and so on...but now everybody got 3runs, a technical one, a style one and one you were able to choose...

i had to go against Thomas Hlawitschka out of germany who did huge and really good looking sw misty 10s!
so the first round was the technical one and Thomas put down his sw 10 perfectly and i did my sw 10 too, the style jump had to decide...Thomas went for a smooth bio5 but struckelt in the air and i nailed my 5blunt tail perfectly.
Now Thomas went for another bio5 but overrotaed a little bit in the landing, so i advanced to super Finals, as well as Henrik Harlaut, Kalle Leinonen and Oscar Sherlin...

Due to time proplems every rider just got 1 more run, so everybody was trying to do his best to get a new suzuki...
I was first and put down my sw 10 mute to tail better then ever before, next was Kalle, who did a huge sw misty 12 but missed the grab and slightly landed on his ass, Henrik did a sw14(with 16years...) but unfortunately he put his hands down and missed his grab too,
now Oscar dropped in and put down a huge perfectly tweaked sw 10 nose mute.....which was putting him into first place, right before me...

but everybody, especially me, was really stoked about the comp and the results.....

8th Pekka Hyysalo Fin
7th Martin Misof   Aut
6th Thomas Hlawitschka Ger
5th Russ Henshaw Aus
4th Kalle Leinonen Fin
3rd Henrik Harlaut Swe
2nd Roy Kittler Ger
1st Oscar Sherlin Swe

now everybody  was going to the afterparty, exept of us because we had to go to kitzsteinhorn for the x-override a friend had invited us too....
after 2more hours of driving we arrived there and finally good some sleep....

I had to get up really early on sunday, cause training was starting at 8.30am

Sadly the weather was not on our site and the organisation had to change the format after one kicker run to a rail session
Everybody got a good session and had fun even the weatehr wasn´t to good...and in the end the top three had been:

3rd Szczepan Karpiel Pol
2nd Patrick Hollaus Aut
1st Roy Kittler Ger

unfortuneatly we also had to leave right after the comp to drive another 8h back home, because i destroyed the wheel of my car on thursday, so we had to take the car of my girlfriends parents company, and we had to bring it back until monday morning because of work...
so we were not able to party at all but still had a good time and some funny driving hours