Semi-final training

As you allready know I am in Japan for the Nippon freeskiing Open. I'm in the semi-finals for big-air, and today was training day. Alex, Frido, Pc and Me was hiking the quarterpipe below the big-air jump to get our tricks better and higher. A lot of guys were throwing sick tricks today, and many were speeding up to get higher airs. I got to attend two trainings today. Bigair practice in the morning and hiking quarterpipe and bigair practice in the afernoon. I had a pretty fun day, and Ida was taking some photos after lunch.

The snow came in in the afternoon, and it was har to see the landing. The takeoff was sketchy and slushy. In the first training today I tried a few sw 1080's, since I haven't done more than like 5 of them all year!! I ended up pulling of my ski in the air, but it went all good. Nobody got hurt. In the afternoon I got my sw 10 a couple of times and it felt great.

Tomorrow is Semis and HOPEFULLY finals, can't wait!!

See you..

Big in Japan, qualifiers day

4 heat with 15-17 men in each, went off today. Pc Fosse in the 1st heat, kangaroo japan to 540 in the quarter, qualified as 4th. Fridtjof Fredricsson went into the 3rd heat with a large double-corked 1080 high-mute to 540 cork in the quarter, and placed 6th. I had the pleasure of dropping in as last man in the last heat, and that sucked cause I get SO nervous. The jetlag aren't really helping me to get stoked and fresh, so I was supertired and sleepy. I didn't think I was going to land anything since my legs didn't even care to take my body-weight. But, I got my first run very good. A large switch 9 mute to 540 mute in the quarter, and a funky 7 to 540 mute on the cooping in my second run. I placed 1st in my run, and placed 7th overall of the 65 competitors in the qualifiers. Super-saticefied and stoked after all the crap after I got here.

The jump was a lot better today. The air was colder and the landing was steeper, still slushy in the inrun. A few japanese guys actually crashed in the inrun. That was hilarious, hehe.

Frido is a funny kid, an he is superstoked to be taken pictures of and mentioned on my blog, I find that very funny. Hehe.

Frido's superstylish double-cork 1080 mute. I am speachless.

Team-manager as Ida's NIPPON badge says. Supercool to have her with me for once, it is allways the first thing I do after comps. Notify my family and Ida how today's action went off. Now she can see it herself. ALL the pictures are taken by her, I think they are sick. Props.

Alex Aurdal arrived yesterday without his skibag, and that was after missing his flight to Tokyo. So a lot of bad luck for him. But good thing is that he is directly in to the Semi-Finals. Invited rider.

The youngsters having fun with slushy snowballs. Alex and PC.

Smile, qualifiers are up. Yeah.

Boys in the club. Alex, Frido and PC.



Saturday is semi-finals and finals. Wish us luck and I will keep you updated!!

Peeeeeace...

Big In Japan 1

So here we are, across the planet in the land of crazy people! Everyone here is crazy. There are sounds and music everywere, strange food, no forks and knives, just chop-sticks (which I hate). The trip was long and the jetlag has kicked in big-time. Today was training and I bearly managed to do anything on the jump. It is actually the worst competition jump I have ever hit. Step-down with a lot of kick, to a landing which is FLAT. It is so flat that it couldn't even be called a landing. I'm really enjoying beeing in a different time-zone and continent, if you look away from the language and the food, hehe.
Hai!! Here I am, just arrived Japan in a Kymono (I think), and jetlag sucks!!
The course, the shady course. The jump might at first look smooth, but it sucks! Flat landing and way to short and kicky take-off. 60 % of todays athletes at training crashed bad!
Hotel Green Plaza in Joetsu Kokusai ski-resort. Probably the largest hotel I have ever seen. Or longest. 200 meters atleast!
Something weird written in a weird language....
Tokyo is a small city, just like the northern cities of Norway.... or maybe a LITTLE bit larger?

The course, which sucks...
The longest hotel I have ever seen! 200 meters or so.

Weeeeird language...

Kymono I think, nice suite!

Tokyo is one of the largest cities I have seen. Just a little bigger than Oslo or Lillehammer.

Noodles, niice.. Only thing that is eatable down here.

The main jump, flat ass landing and a kicky kicker...

Pc Fosse to the left and Frido "I wanna be on your Blog" Fridtjofsen to the right. Who also did a sick double-cork 1080 mute today. True PK style. Pc did kangi's and 10's aswell.

Rainy days, and pretending to be stoked!!

Tomorrow is qualifiers. I'm in the last heat (D). And That is good, then I get to sleep late.

L8er, Steff1

Jon Olsson Invitational Video-Qualify video

Please comment or vote!

I am off to Japan, see you!

Kate Perry and Jon Olsson..

Today is finally a booring good old sunday. I am sitting in my girlfriend's house checking my mail and drinking coffee. The last week was really tough, traveling to 5 different skiresorts throughout Norway in ONE week, and housing 5 different Jib Academy competitions. I was coach and judge together with Ole Mustad, Gaute Silseth, Christopher Frankum, Acke and Kim Hellebust. It turned out okay, and kids were happy! Got to ski VERY good in Beitosdølen two days with sun, and I got to work out at the gym! Go Beito!!

Today is a downday, and I have to get a lot of things straight before traveling to Japan and Tokyo tomorrow morning. Skis are waxed, and I need to pack my stuff. This time I am bringing my girlfriend with me for once. Since I have been traveling and skiing every week since christmas, and three weeks in us BEFORE christmas, I don't really see Ida much, which sucks when you got a girlfriend. So this time she is going with me across the world, taking photos, shooting videoblog and hanging out, beeing my motivator. Hehe.

Videoblog vol2 is on it's way on www.downdays.eu Pro Rider TV!! This time it's from Crans Montana and the Champs Open. Things aren't allways working out the way it should, see the behind the scenes video from the three Norwegian skiers in Switzerland.

Now I am off to pack and get ready for Japan, wish me luck!! By the way, Slopestyle got canceled and turned into a BigAir, me LIKE!!

Jon Olsson Invitational is happening this season! In Trysil, and videoqualifiers are open, Fredrik my filmer and friend, are working on my video, check it out this week!!

Itunes track of the day: Hot N'Cold - Katy Perry - Manhattan Clique Remix

Steffen.

Finally! Pro-Rider TV!

http://www.downdays.eu/ has just launched their new videopage with several new features. One of them is the new Pro-Rider TV. I have got my very own channel in there. My videos from now on will be posted there. As I have been thinking of doing this videoblog/behind the scenes thing a long time now, this is sort of my perfect opportunity to show people what my skiing is all about.

You will allways find the direct link to the video-page on the right side of the blog main-page.
OR,

You can go here: http://www.downdays.eu/sites/pro-rider-tv/home/steffen-hamre

I hope you enjoy this, and more videos will be posted shortly!

Ciao, S.

Jib-Academy 2009 - The tour

This week I am traveling with Salomon around Norway to do the Jib Academy tour. This is actually a nice little brake for myself to recover from all the skiing and sore legs. A whole week with crusing and coaching kids.

The tour started off at Oppdal in the middle of Norway, and then on to Hafjell (the olympic resort of 1994) were I ski most of my time in Norway, and now at Beitostølen mountain resort. The park at Beito is actually one of the best in Norway right now, honestly!! The railpark is superfunny with 10 rails, more or less. And the setup is made perfectly, not sketchy at all. You could probably do all your best rail moves here. And for the jumps, it is 3 in a row with transititon to transition. Which means that you could ski straight down from the first and second landing, and get perfect speed on the next jump. (Which is PIMP).

Salomon has fixed us a supernice condo here, and we are eating decent food, and just hanging out with friends.

After hiking rails today I realized how fun skiing really is. Now it's time to go to the gym and work out a little.

See you around!

S.

www.steffenhamre.com Videoblog vol.1

For the last 1,5 year I have been doing this blog thing. It started out pretty booring with few visitors (which I expected). The last summer was almost a non-visiting period for my blog, and this fall and pre-winter has overgone ALL my expectations!! Allmost 35 000 people has been reading or watching my blog since October last fall. That is a lot of readers. So thank you very much for taking time off your day to read about my skiing career.

To give something back to all you guys, I have decided to take you with me while traveling the world. With my ghetto cam I will try to make edits and videoblog posts so that you all can see what's going on behind the scenes in comps, film/photo-shoots and training. I allways read and watch videos and text-coverage from Competitions, but it's all the same. People that is not there to see that specific competition, tend to be a little more smart-ass than they should. If a skier won for some reason, and the people back home reading the results start to make up their own thoughts about the comp. Some actually mean the winner is not the winner, eventhough he or she hasn't even seen the comp themselves. That is why I wan't to show people what is ACTUALLY going on behind the startgate, hotel or slopes throughout the winter. This videoblog may seem booring to some, and entertaining to others. But all in all, I will try to mix up the content so that all you can watch a decent video every now and then!

I hope you understand what this is all about, and that you enjoy it! Please feel free to post comments underneath every blog post if you wondering of something, and I will put the posts up!

So here we go; The first videoblog post on www.steffenhamre.com Polish Freeskiing Open - Behind the scenes.

Videos will be permanently moved to www.downdays.eu as soon as their pro-rider videopage will come up in a week or two!!

Enjoy!!

Unity Prod. Video summary from PFO2009

Check out Unity Productions supercool video-summary from the Polish Freeskiing Open, the semi runs and the final runs + interviews!!

See the video here: http://www.downdays.eu/en/video/unity-productions-pfo-2009

Stay tuned for a behind the scenes video from both PFO and Champs Open in Switzerland!! Stay tuned!

Steffen..

...and yeah, my carbatteries are flat, so I can't get nowhere, I'm stuck!!

French Open

No offense to the clever heads up at Crans-Montana.. But come on? Top ten in the slopestyle comp was only SUI, FRA, AUS. One guy from Australia, and the rest is french and swiss riders.. You can do better than that? The weather wasn't really equal to all riders in the finals, snow and wind. The course itself includes two jumps, a corner and a halfpipe.. How nice! I hate pipe, but I attended anywho since I was pre-qualified. That didn't really matter since the 52 other guys that HAD to qualify were threw into a large group WITH the pre-qualified riders.. That made a whole 65 riders with two runs each, best one counted. I had a total three runs of training in the course, and I did not feel confident enough to perform at my best. First run was allright: Sw 9 mute, funky 7 over the gap, rodeo 7 to the knuckle on the Spine/Corner. Then two straightairs and a 540 in the pipe.

2nd run started great!! Sw 9 mute with stomped landing, far down actually. Then into a funky 7 to the bottom of the landing. Since the speed got terrible the hour between my first and second run, I decided to skip the straightjump on the corner, and instead of gaping the whole thing, I did a 270 on the hip and landed on the side of the landing. But the kicker and landing was SOO icy, so I threw in a spread eagle 270 to my ass.. And then two sucky airs in the pipe to a no grabber 540. My score was based on my first three jumps in my first run, since my pipe tricks was terrible. I hate pipe, and I will allways do. I have never ever trained hard to be good in pipe, and we don't got any good pipes in Norway either.

This was a long boooring text with no pictures and fun stuff. But I just have to throw away my frustration. I feel like all I train for and learn are useless in this kind of competitons. Some said that judges were only looking for spins up to 720, which is redicilous. Even though if the judges like to see style and no more spins than 720, you still wouldn't do it. You wanna do the sw 9's and foreward 9's and 7's you have practiced on back home!

End of story, I am out. Norway is calling, and me and Alex are going back home tomorrow.

Here are the results:

http://champsopen.ch/sites/default/files/pdfdocs/CHAMPS%20Open%2009-Freeski%20Final%20Results.pdf

Crans-Montana, Switzerland. The 3 norwegian knights

            Eating dinner... Stoked?
                   The 3 norwegian studs having fun
   Inside activities... Watching movies while the weather sucks!
    Happyface, Bananaboy and RAMBO!

It is now 10.26 in the morning here in the small rich-mans village in the Swiss alps, and I am lying in Aleks Aurdal´s bed and waiting for Halvard Thon to come up in our hotel. We have been here for the last four days skiing and training. We are here for the Champs Open slopestyle competition, which got cancelled due to strong wind last year when me and Kim Boberg was here.  

This year is no exception, snowboard qualifiers and finals + skiers qualifiers are supposed to be done several days ago, but they have not yet finished it due to heavy wind and bad weather. Today is finals for snowboard, and for the skiers they have decided to put all the riders (both qualifiers and invited) into a large group and do two runs, best one counts.  Since snowboarders get first priority due to the TTR tour, we have to wait until 2 o´clock.

It is sunny today, a little snow in the air, and less wind than the days before. Hopefully we can compete and ski for real today, since the last three days just have been cruising and fooling around the slopes, and watching movies and The office on my computer.... Which is not pimp when you want to go skiing. Me, Aleksander Aurdal and Halvard Thon are going up to check out the course, and hopefully train and compete.  

In meanwhile, check out the money shots from Aleks´s camera the last few days!!

Underline titles by Aleks

Polish video from Polish Freeski Open Finals

Check it ooowwwt...


PFO Day 2-The Finals from Laola Pictures on Vimeo.

Armada Driggs skijakke selges!

http://www.zett.no/sm%C3%A5ttogstort__til_salgs.html?objectId=1489488


Les annonsen over, løp og kjøp!

S.

Hafjell shredding edit

Yesterday my girlfriend Ida brought out the ghetto-camcorder and taped a few of my runs. Mostly just cruising and practicing on all-round tricks for the Champs Open slopestyle comp in Switzerland this weekend. Enjoy, and please comment if you like it!



1 10 minute Videoblog from Polish freeski open is nearly finished, stay tuned!