Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

The winter is coming around again so I thought it was time to bring everyone up to date on how the team is getting along.

It has been quite a quiet summer with none of the riders going to NZ this year after a gruelling 2008 winter some time off was definitely required to recover and relax. Various members of the team were located in Les 2 Alpes, Hintertux, Foglefonna and Les Diablerets training and learning new tricks with their friends and relaxing, what riding is all about. Now with winter approaching minds are firmly set on fresh snow, contests and filming.

Contest News

The first contest of the year was, as usual, the Freestyle.ch in Zurich and ACG had a strong representation from the skiers with previous winner Martin Misof back in the line up after missing last year due to injury. Also riding was Andreas Hatveit, (our 2008 X-Games gold medallist), Rich Permin, Roy Kittler, Paddy Graham and Mirjam Jaeger on the judging panel. The worlds top riders were representing on this new and even bigger jump. Some of the riders had some speed issues which meant that there was quite a lot of knuckling or people just scraping past and it wasn’t until the cross-over session at night until we saw riders really enjoying the speed necessary. Martin Misof qualified in second place which meant he competed in the night session and put in a great performance in front of the 30,000 strong crowd with a huge switch backflip as a crowd pleaser. On the down side Andreas came up short in qualification and was taken to hospital to have his knee looked at. He returned on crutches to watch the finals and speak to the other riders and has since seen his specialist back in Norway and has told me that he hopes to be back riding in December.

The next stop on the calendar is the London Freeze on the 23^rd October (www.londonfreeze.com) where we have the same riders representing along with Thomas Dolplads from Norway. Paddy will be keen to do well in front of his home crowd and will have two chances, firstly in the international contest of Friday against the worlds best and then again for the UK title on Sunday. As well as looking after the team in London I will be in charge of shaping the ramp to make sure it is at its best throughout the weekend for everyone involved....should be a great weekend and Cypress Hill are even headlining on the Saturday night.

The final event in the season opening trio is the King of Style in Stockholm with Rich Permin heading back to defend his title with the rest of the team following to try to take it off him, keep your eyes peeled to see what happens!

Early season

The crew are spread across Europe at home making their preperations for winter. Roy has rented an apartment in Mayrhofen to train in Hintertux each day, Mirjam is off to Breckenridge to get that knee back in shape and learn some new tricks to try and improve on her silver in last years X-Games halfpipe. Martin is shooting straight over to the states to start filming with Broken Radio/Headbutt films where they have rented a house in Breck for a month to try and get a good start to the season and get the early shots in. Sverre has been surfing lately in Sweden, sounds cold, and is heading over to Kaunertal for the Gortex/Kask sales trip where Kaj and himself are presenting freeride skiing to the industry, following that he heads to Engelberg for a month in Dec-Jan to find his legs and search for the snow.

Off the back of a missed season Henning has been training hard and is looking forward to competing in the top quarterpipe contests around the world again and in between is keeping on top of his studying, soon (well a few years)  we will have our own team physio!

This seasons films are starting to premier around the world and ACG has sponsored some of the top titles out there with the team representing strongly throughout and showing that the sweetspots are only the tip of the iceberg. Turbo, the new film from Level 1 is just out and Flo Kofer has been leading the freeride charge, Ulrik has a super strong section in the new Factor Films Production and for his first ever part he has to be happy, I am looking forward to seeing what he comes up with this year. Rich Permin had his first trip to AK with Rage films and although he hit some bad weather out there he came back content and smiling confident he got the goods. Jules Reymond has been filming with absinthe all season and spent six weeks in AK and got two great week for the first two weeks and sent back stories of unreal lines.

The winter is coming

London is the start of winter for Nike ACG with the sweetspots 2008-2009 launch happening in London before the Freeze event with the team representing among the press and audience. Date and time is still to be released however its sure to be a good night and the perfect pre-party to the Freeze....see you there.

Cheers

Graham

Nike ACG Skiers were out in force last weekend at the Freestyle.ch in Zurich.

Our riders included Andreas Hatveit, Rich Permin, Roy Kittler, Martin Misof and the UK’s Paddy Graham who all competed in the Freestyle Ski comp. Freestyle.ch is a fantastic event with packed crowds and a cross over action sports format including Snowboard, Freestyle skiing, vert skateboarding and FMX.

Andreas was of course one of the favourites for the event but disaster struck when he pulled up 4 feet short on the knuckle in training and had to be taken to hospital for what looked like a bad knee injury. We are all hoping it’s not a serious as it looked and hoping for a speedy recovery – get well mate.

From a Nike ACG standpoint, the weekend belonged to Martin. He’s absolutely the crowd pleaser and really steps it up in big crowd kicker events like these. His switch back-flips and stylish switch 10’s had the crowd going ballistic. Martin sweeped through to the Cross-over jam on Saturday night along with Simon Dumont (Nike 6.0 rider). This year, Skaters took the honours in the cross over with Sandro Diaz putting down enough amplitude and tech in his run to gain the biggest cheers from the 45,000 strong crowd.

In the ski finals on Sunday, no one could compete with Jacob Wester who won the super-final with an incredibly stylish double cork 12.

The next big snowsports event will be in London and again we’ll have a big team of Nike ACG athletes riding in both ski and snowboard. Check it out and get your tickets at www.londonfreeze.com .