Nike ACG Team Blog : News from the snowbard team

The Brits – Laax, Switzerland

Team Nike ACG were killing it at The Brits this year – Murray Buchan (16 yrs) set the standard on day 1 by taking home the British Half Pipe Freeski Championship title. He was on fire stomping his run which included a 900, to 1080 and reverse mute alley-oop. Paddy Graham was hot on his tail claiming 3^rd place with some huge airs and a massive d-spin 900.

Zoe Gillings showed us all why she’s one of the world’s top boardercross riders by throwing herself out of the start gate and leaving the other boarders trailing in her wake. She had a solid run and kept her lead throughout to claim the Gold.

Dan Wakeham just missed out on a podium place in the Half pipe, despite scoring the top score on his qualifying run. He was clearly on top form during qualifying, throwing down perfect frontside 10s and proving that he’s still the best pipe rider in the UK. Other notable results were Murray taking second in his age group in the ski slopestyle, as well as runner-up in the carnage that was the Red Bull Home Run – not bad for a wee guy. Paddy on the other hand chose style over speed…

BUSC – Hinterglemm, Austria

Whilst some stayed to represent Team Nike ACG at the Brits, others went to join 2,500 British students living it up in the resort of Hinterglemm, Austria. Similar to other alpine resorts across Europe, the snow was still dumping which meant Noddy Gowans could not be held back; he took a crew of eager BUSC students to shred some serious pow, whilst Zoe Gillings spoke about being a pro and riding for the Nike team. We then headed to Tanzhimmel for the Nike ACG party where 2,000 students rocked out to Alps band, Hail Carta.

Nike ACG Press Trip – Pontresina, Switzerland

Having refuelled on schnitzels, we were on the road again, putting the Nike ACG Volvo through its paces, whilst heading back to Switzerland. This season the Nike Press Trip was all about the backcountry so the remote resort of Pontresina was the perfect destination for our shoot.

The team was reunited in Pontresina near Saint Moritz where we would be based for the next few days. Following a day’s avalanche and off-piste training, we awoke to bluebird conditions and epic powder – the perfect setting for our backcountry shoot and long hike to the remote Mountain Hut (complete with its own hole in the ground – luxury this was not…).

Noddy was in his element, continually searching for cliff jumps and leading the way for the rest of the team. The guys took to the off-piste straight away with Dan and Paddy taking their park tricks to the backcountry, whilst Zoe proved that she was just as comfortable in waist-deep pow as she is on a boardercross course, getting some great shots for next season. The trip and stay in the Mountain Hut was an awesome experience but we were all happy to return to the comforts of our hotel and their motto ‘good food – good mood’.

The full story will be in Document Snowboard and Fall-Line Skiing magazines next season, and if you can't wait until then, there will be videos and shots of the document website coming soon: www.documentsnowboard.co.uk 

Images by Yves Garneau 

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.

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 :)  

Last week saw the launch of Nike's new sports exhibition, 'Changing the Game of Women's Sport', at the Blink Gallery in Soho, London. The exhibition is designed to celebrate the country's finest sportswomen highlighting their strength, passion and individuality.

Nike ACG team riders Zoe Gillings and Rebecca Cullum were there, amongst other top Nike female athletes across a wide sporting spectrum, to help raise the profile of women's sport in the UK and encourage more youngsters to follow in the footsteps of the stars. The exhibition has features on different female athletes from the entire sporting world, including world championship 5000m Irish gold medallist Sonia O'Sullivan.

Fresh from her stint at the Winter X Games, Zoe Gillings has finally found time to catch up with the Elk and report on her success at the event.

Here follows her account of the Games...

The way the format works at the X games is there are 18 girls invited and all of them do one qualification run with the top 8 girls going straight through to the heats and the remaining 10 do a second run with the top 4 from that run going through.

The X games course wasn’t as long or as crazy as I thought it was going to be. It did however have a large box near the end that was about 10 foot high with a jump in front of it that you had to ollie off otherwise you wouldn’t make it on top and would just slam into the front of the box!

In my first qualification run I was in 6th after my run but then got knocked down by a few girls to 9th (very annoying place to be!) So I had to go up again for another run and this one went really well so I won that run by about a second and a half.

So I was in 9th for the heats the next day. There were 12 girls in total in
2 heats of 6 with the top 3 from each heat going through to the finals. In my first heat I got a pretty good start out of the gate and was in 2nd then went into 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th back to 3rd around the 2nd to last bend then I took too much of a wide line and got passed on the inside so went over the line in 4th.

So I was now in the small final to decide places 7 - 12. I got out of the gate fast again and was in the lead from the start and stayed there all the way to the end. Switzerland's Sandra Frei tried to catch me up all the way down but didn't succeed. Craig (my coach) said the commentators were talking about the 2 Americans in my heat while we were in the gate and didn't mention anyone else then when I got in front they were like "And Gillings is in front! Wow she is really far in front!" Where did she come from?!"

So brief summary first heat not to good but second one brilliant!