Freeride World Tour Qualifier Engadinsnow Competition.. AKA Catch up with friends day!

Sorry for taking so long to get another post up….. BUT we have been busy busy bees over the last week or so!!!

So after a few really nice days riding in Verbier are motley crew consisting of fellow Storm Team rider Julie Fletcher, Brit freeskier Luke Potts and myself squeezed into “Black Beauty”… (the name for my rather beat up black Ford Focus Estate..SPORT) for the 6 or so hour drive over to St Moritz to get ready to compete in the Freeride World Tour Qualifier Engadinsnow! The drive was pretty easy, apart from the Sat Nav taking us for a quick sightseeing trip around Zürich and some F1 style chain putting on and off when we got back into the mountains near St Moritz!

We checked in to our pretty cool hotel, and it was awesome to catch up with friends that I hadn’t seen since last winter, team Kiwi had pretty much taken over the place, with the Kuzma sisters holding court!

Riders meeting was really well run by the organisers and we all got our bibs, number 66 for me, which wasnt too bad pretty much late middle of the field starting wise and Julie got a pretty nice number also!

Julie with her bib on the way up to the face!

Then it was back to the hotel for my favourite part of the trip… sharing a huge double bed with not only Miss Fletcher but British snowboarder Chris Southwell…. Julie just didn’t know how lucky she was….!

It was an early start and we got up to scope our lines on the face, it was awesome to have such a big crew of us together, as i hate trying to decide which line to take on my own! It was also really cool to catch up with my old wingman Kiwi Sam Smoothy who i spent a lot of time with last year but hadn’t seen for months!!

We all watched the girls as they had a go first, Julie did awesome, she hit pretty much the line she wanted, stomped her bottom cliff and shredded nice and fast to the finish! For her first comp, she did ace, and finished with a very good 10th place!

The face was ok, snow was pretty good, but a bit sugary and sluffy in the rocky sections, which i would find out later on… grrr! Got my line in my head that i was happy with and headed to the start with Mr Southwell. It was awesome having him starting around the same number as me, as we both calmed our nerves by talking about everything and anything (most of it un printable) before we dropped in!

I dropped just before Chris, really confident of my line, dropped my first air into the rocky section that i was hoping to ski through nice and fast and send the cliff at the bottom to exit…. best laid plans never happen in a freeride comp…..

As soon as i dropped in to the rocky section i realised that because of previous athletes that had been through, all the snow had sluffed off, leaving rock and not much else to ski on… there was no way i could get any speed up to send my bottom cliff and make the landing so i picked my way out of the rocks sent a smaller part of where i meant to go and got to the bottom tail between my legs knowing i had not done nearly enough to qualify for the finals….

Quick photo in the finish area after getting down in one piece!

We watched the rest of the athletes come down, some pretty good lines, and some nice backflips thrown down. Results came through, team GB, a bit like the current Olympic team, had underperformed a little bit… none of us Brits qualified for the finals but team NZ had a good day with Pete Oswald qualifying in 5th to go through and Smoothy already there which was awesome! Team GB cut our losses and with none of us in the finals there was no free hotel room to all stay in so we headed back to Verbier with the promise of fresh snow coming!

Finals day went really well for Smoothy….. he got that major victory he has been hunting for ages, he smashed it in the final coming away with a well deserved 1st place! Well done bro!

From Left to right: Scottish, Me!, Mark and Luke at the end of the qualies!

We all got back to Verbier pretty late, so decided against the big night out we were going to have…. but a good nights sleep was had by all and we woke to see buckets of snow falling out the sky the next morning!!

Another post to follow very soon i promise, with all the craziness that fresh snow and sunny powder days bring!! With a few photos!

Just a quick get well soon note… both Chris Southwell and Sam Smoothy had big crashes in the last World Tour Qualifier in Austria, Smoothy has been told he has a broken leg and it is season over for him, such a shame as he was on top form and looked like he would finish top 3 in the world rankings, get well soon mate, miss you already! Chris, not as bad, but he was pretty banged up with stitches in his shoulder and leg, girls of Verbier should watch out…. with him off the hill for a couple of weeks i am sure the Farinet is where most of his “recovery” time will be spent… you are all warned!

xxx

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