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