World Cup Action

November 5, 2007 on 10:05 pm | In Snowboarding |

Lesley in the Saas Fee pipe.

Last Friday saw the opening European Half Pipe World Cup of the season kick off in Saas Fee, Switzerland. I was there competing with fellow Scots and World Cup Team mates Angus Leith and Ben Kilner. The pipe they built in Saas Fee was the best one I have ever seen there and as a consequence the riding standard was very high. Undortunatley, due to bad weather, the first day of training had to be cancelled but the weather cleared up for the second training day and by the competition day it was a beautiful sunny day. It always makes a bigh difference to the riding if the weather is nice and here was no exception. The riders wore smiles as they flew high out of the pipe and lapped up the sunshine as they watched and admired the tricks being layed down.

Here is the ladies winner Kjersti Buaas on the podium

It was obvious that there had been a lot of training going on over the summer months as the riders were showing off new trick combinations left right and centre. In the end it was Kjersti Buaas who came out on top in the girls competition with new comer Chinese girl Chen Xu in second and World Champion Manuela Pesko in third. In the mens’ contest half Russian, half Swiss Juri Poladechov took the top spot with Fin Jenne Korpi in second and the Swiss rider Christian ‘Hitch’ haller in third. In the british camp, I came out on top with a respectable 11th place, which, added to my 8th in New Zealand in September, puts me in 9th place in the standings. Dan Wakeham had the best result of the UK guys with a 24th place although luck was definitely not on our side as well all messed up at least one of our qualification runs. That is the way it goes though and it is far more important to keep pushing limitis than worry about taking a few slams!

Lesley McKenna
http://www.chunkyknit.com
Professional snowboarder, film maker and ambassador for Visitscotland. All sorts of outdoor sports from skiing to mountain biking and now mixes her time on the Snowboard World Cup Tour with time in Scotland doing these sports.