WSI Madness: Stompede slopestyle!

Photos: JD Caron

WSI 2007 kicked off on Saturday, April 14 with the Stompede qualifiers. For those wondering what the Stompede is, you should just check the WSI homepage and read about it… naaaaaaaaa I’m kidding, the Stompede is like a slopestyle on a super short jib run where riders can pick which line they wanna ride, and then try impressing the judges with their jib tricks and small-sized air ability.



Now let’s talk about the course eh. Well first off, Whistler did a nice job building a course that rider enjoyed this year, with a choice of three main lines that you could mix a bit if you're into taking a big carve between jibs. The left line was a double-kink box into a big flat gap down box where the Mcdonalds "I’m stomping it" comp would go down (I’ll talk about it later) followed by a mini step up to down box. The middle line was a down urban-style rail into a box to gap set-up into a wall ride with two jumps on the side to hit it like a normal box. Finally, the right line was a scaffolding drop-off thing into a log bonk jib that you could hit from the side to transfer followed by a upward boner box.


The qualis went down during a 90-minute session where every rider got four runs, and had to do different stuff to impress the judges in one best run format, but where doing the same run over and over would make you score lower kinda like an overall impression thing. I didn’t really get that, it might be me being too French again but since most riders seemed confused, I thought I was not that stupid finally. ☺



Highlights from the qualis were Cosco’s and Austin Ross’s misty flippy thing off the box to gap set up, and Phil Casabon and Mike Henitiuk being just as stylie as you can be. Justin Dorey had what I considered as the most progressive and cool run of the qualis: switch lip 270 followed by a tail press bs 270 out and a crazy smooth handplant to 360 off the wall ride.



So the results came down and they seemed logical, except for Frank Raymond not making the cut with his super tech and stylie rail progress.

The finals went down on Sunday and it’s safe to say everyone killed it. The results don’t give much justice to the riding since we can't see the scores from each run, but yeah it was fun and it’s safe to say that skiers are definitely pushing it on jibs this year.

I didn’t stay for the award ceremony because I had to get dinner with some friends, but the reggae show that went down before the ceremony was off the hook.