Author Archive
Colin Frei in Saas-Fee, Switzerland
Swiss rider Colin Frei has had an amazing season of shredding and has certainly established himself as one of the best Quarterpipe riders in the business. He ended his 07/08 TTR season in 50th by competing in only 5 and 6 star events and earned a reputation to go big. Really big. We’re talking over 8 m. TTR caught up with Colin at the Snickers Classic in Saas-Fee Switzerland for a few words on his recent accomplishments: Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s the new King of Popcorn?
Laaaaaiiiiiiiid Baaacckk © Jeff Green Photo
With the Slopestyle portion of the Snickers Classic finished on Saturday, it was time for riders to take on the big, red, gargantuan, beast of a wallride conveniently constructed in front of the Popcorn bar at the top of Saas-Fee. (I guess that’s why they call it the Popcorn wallride – I always thought it had something to do with riders ‘popping like corn’ but hey, this works too). By competing in both the Slopestyle and Wallride sessions, riders fought to dethrone the previous 07 king Nicolas Mueller and become the 2008 King of Popcorn.
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TOTAL FIGHT QUALIS
© – Total Fight
Riders are going off in Andorra at the 4-STar Grandvalira Total Fight. Blue bird skies and one sick park is all any one needed to tear it up and set the bar for the next few days of competition. The qualified riders listed below threw down today and made the list to compete against the invited riders in the Expression Session on Saturday. Look forward to a heated finale in one of the best snowboard contests on the Spanish scene. Read the rest of this entry »
Unraveling the Wängl Tängl
© – TTR
Today, March 6th 2008, the Swatch TTR 5-Star Ästhetiker Jam Wängl Tängl kicked off in Mayrhofen, Austria as shredders began their fight for 24 spots in the finals. The sun was shining, the beats were pumping and the riders were going off in the first qualification session of the week. It all got started mid-day as riders sessioned the four hit kicker line in two heats, each containing about 25 riders. We saw some sick tricks from all the riders out there including smooth 7s, solid 9s and 10s along with some high flying double back flips and tweaked airs.
Warm up sessions in Norway
© – Rich/TTR
After almost a 20 hour drive starting in Austria, making our way through five countries and a dark, all-consuming fog, the rest of the TTR crew safely made it up to Norway just in time for the warm up and training sessions at the SIX(6)STAR Oakley Arctic Challenge.
Will we see 10m in Innsbruck?
It was really warm out today, highly irregular for the beginning of February in the Austrian Alps, but that didn’t stop the riders from getting in some training on the Quarterpipe the day before the Billabong Air & Style in Innsbruck.
Despite the high winds, riders were still going huge, reaching 7 and 8 m. The question is, will we see any of the riders break Terje Haakonsen’s Quarterpipe record of 9.8 m? Jack Mitrani seems to think so claiming that he’s “trying to go for that 20m mark.” Optimism is always a good thing so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Burton European Open Men’s SS qualifications while the big dogs train the pipe
Today the skies opened up after 2 & 1/2 ft of snow dumped on Laax over the past 24 hours. The junior competitions in slopestyle and halfpipe went down on Friday and Saturday, and today we saw the qualifying runs for the up-and-comers, and the big-dogs heating things up in some training sessions. Read the rest of this entry »
FRESH ACTION FROM CHINA
The riders in China for the 6th Red Bull Nanshan Open have got it made. Christian Reinhardt has been feeding us info from halfway across the world for the FOUR(4)STAR Swatch TTR event, and from what we’ve read and seen, things are going off not only in the park but also everywhere else. Riders arrived on Wednesday and were welcomed with all you can eat dinners, a trip to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen square, a bowling extravaganza and even full body massages! China sounds like the place to be right now while we’re freezing here in Davos! Read the rest of this entry »
THE PODLADTCHIKOV CONNECTION
In typical TTR fashion, the crew was set up to begin the filming of Iouri Podladtchikov’s TTR video profile along with some TV content. Iouri was in house when suddenly there was some loud music coming from outside the interview room. Generally speaking, we don’t like it when stuff interferes. We opened the door and try to ask as politely as we can for the noise to decrease, but before we had a chance to stop anything, in comes TTR’s CEO Drew Stevenson along with Iouri’s musically talented brother Igor Podladtchikov! They gave us a quick sneak preview of the duet that was to take place later in the evening after the quarterpipe qualifications.
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TTR BRINGING BACK THE STICKER SLAP
The TTR Crew took the massive 60-person gondola to the top of the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier to meet up with the girls at the top of the Roxy Glacier Park. The wind was howling and it was freezing! It was hilarious trying to get down.
While we were waiting in the restaurant at the peak, we noticed that all the rider’s boards were sitting in a row, so a TTR employee, who will remain anonymous, decided to bring back the sticker slap and plastered the TTR World Snowboard Tour logo on Jamie Anderson’s board. We’re still not sure if she’s figured it out, so we’re hoping it’ll stay on long enough for the finals tomorrow… Read the rest of this entry »