13 January 2010


After Davos, Direction Laax for the Burton European Open. The BEO, in other words, the biggest european snowboard contest. All week long, we will provide you with reports, videos and photos until the finals of friday and saturday. You can watch the event live here. Read the rest of the article to see the results of the kids and the the video and nice photos!



Here we are, in Laax, for the Burton European Open. Burton: the brand, check, European: Europe, our continent... check, Open: ? Why open? Simply because this contest is open to everyone who would like to participate. And they were 468 riders in the starting blocks this year! And it is a long way to the podium. Let me picture it for you with an example: Slopestyle Men: 1st step: pre-qualifiers (only 50 riders are kept) 2nd step: qualifiers (18 riders over 50 are kept) 3rd step: semi finals 14 riders are "invited" so it makes 18+14=32 (we have a tough job) 32 riders for 16 places in the finals. 4th step: The Final with the 16 riders left... A victory at the BEO has to be deserved !

The set up is really nice: The Halfpipe is perfect and the slopestyle is long with a lot of options: boxes, pole jams, jib, rails, then a quarter and three tables: what it takes for a good rider to fully express himself. In order to have a real "slopestyle" and not something that looks like a "big air", the jumps only represent 50% of the final grade, the other 50% is attributed to jibs and to the quarter.

The BEO started with the kids. And I can tell the seniors were not laughing... In the pipe, Chloe Kim wins (9 year old, btw the youngest participant) and for the boys it is Seamus O’Connor, 12 year old. And what do we do in a halfpipe when we are a 9yo snowboarder in 2010? Back5, front5, barrel roll, front3 and cab3. bim. Watch the video! She shared the podium with Ty Walker, who was at her best this week end. She won the slopestyle and ended on the second step of the podium behind Chloé Kim for the pipe. For the boys David Hablutzel from switzerland won the slopestyle.


 
Junior Halfpipe Boys’ Results
1.     Seamus O’Connor (USA) Oakley 90.00
2.     Tim-Kevin Ravnjak (SLO) Burton 87.20
3.     David Hablützel (SUI) Burton 86.40
 
Junior Halfpipe Girls’ Results
1.     Chloe Kim (USA) 85.80
2.     Ty Walker (USA) Roxy 79.00
3.     Kirra Kotsenburg (USA) Roxy 45.60

Junior Slopestyle Boys’ Results
1.     David Hablützel (SUI) 85.00
2.     Tim-Kevin Ravnjak (SLO) 79.83
3.     Jan Kralj (SLO) 79.33
 
Junior Slopestyle Girls’ Results
1.     Ty Walker (USA) Roxy 66.00
2.     Ramona Petrig (SUI) Esperanto 52.17
3.     Chloe Kim (USA) 42.83





BTW:
- Ty Walker who won the kids slopestyle for girls is qualified for the slopestyle semi finals. And she does it well: she is first, with 10 points in advance on the 3rd place.
- Torre Holvik is making pressure on his opponents during the trainings and the pre-qualifiers of the pipe. We keep an eye on him...
- Ville Paumola, after a second place at the O'nelll Evolution of Davos, continues to impress us and gets qualified easily.
- Kevin Pearce is in the middle of all the discussions and a lot of messages are destinated to him on riders' boards.

Stay tuned because this news will be updated everyday with photos, videos and reports and on facebook.com/fluofun for further informations...