Night Ski 2007 - Report
The 2007 Fat Face Night Series kicked off in fine form with Night Ski over in Tignes, France on 4th April.
Once again the clouds rolled in as we experienced the worst weather of the week, but in true Fat Face style it cleared just in time for the guys from Evolution 2 to build a fantastic parallel freestyle slalom course!! The new concept courses combined both slalom and freestyle features in the form of rollers and a kicker running parallel into Tignes, leaving competitors to battle it out head to head. This helped to open up the event to a wide variety of both skiers and boarders, with entrants from 9 counties including Australia; this truly was an international event.
Once the course was built, the competitors had an opportunity to ride it and the jumps in the testing and icy conditions. The timed run for qualification followed and some impressive times were set whilst incorporating some pretty impressive freestyle jumps.
With Qualifiers out the way, it was head to head in the knock outs. This was not based solely on speed but included the quality of trick on the final kicker. With the added incentive of “spot” prizes for spectacular jumps it was a fine line between speed and style. It was 14 year old David Thexton from the UK who wowed the judges with his consistent back flips to take home the Freestyle title and 350 Euros.
In the main event it was pretty close stuff both in the boards and on skis. The female comp was always going to be a close call between Fat Face Team Rider Emma Lonsdale, whose recent results of 2nd in the European Halfpipe and 1st in the Brits for both Halfpipe and Slopestyle gave her the edge technically against her rival Katrien Aerts. However Katrien, last year’s defending female champion from Belgium, held her nerve and used her speed and agility to finally come through and retain the title. Emma, who went into the final jump ahead, unfortunately crashed on landing. In the female boarding it was Belgium Tatyana Umed who just beat Caroline Sonderstrom from Sweeden.
The men’s boarders final was just as close, with Pascal Bosmans from Belgium defending his boarding title but just losing it on the last run to Mikkel Loose from Sweden. In the skiing there was some great talent from the locals, seasonaires and holiday makers. Marcus Hall was tipped to do well but losing a ski in the head to head soon put an end to that. After some incredible displays on the kicker combined with lightning speed through the slalom it was local Keny Favre (nephew to the course builder) who took the title from Jamie Burns who had just being playing international rugby in the snow!
All in all it was a great event. A massive thanks goes to all the competitors and spectators for enduring the cold evening, as well as the resort of Tignes for their hospitality and the fantastic support and organisation from Evolution 2 and Natives. We are already looking forward to next year!!
