Ahhh! a good ol throwback!

I found this a few days ago in my drawers, its from FREEZE, Vol. 3: issue 3

Riksgransen's King of the Hill
Words by Chris O'Connell

For the past three years snowboarders have been flocking to Northern Sweden during the first week of June to compete in the King of the Hill competition at Riksgransen, Sweden. Riksgansen is a gem of a resort just inside the Arctic Circle. about as far north in Sweden that you can, or would want, to travel. This past spring contest organizers, spurred by the exploding interest in terrain park skiing, opened the event to skiers. New schoolers {yes, its one word here!} from Europe, America, Canada, Scandanavia, Japan, and Australia flocked to this small resort to demo some righteous half pipe and quarter pipe action.
Weather in Sweden is like a delinquent child, you never know what it is going to do, but it is usually something bad. This was a particularly bad year, leaving not much snow for everyone to work with. Contest organizers worked day and night (you can do that in Sweden with 24 hours of daylight) to pile snow and hand dig a halfpipe, due to the lack of Pipe Dragons at 63 degrees latitude north. J.P. Auclair and J.F. Cusson were definitely the all-stars having more years of pipe and park experience than most skiers and it showed. J.F. edged out J.P. by putting together a smooth technical run without falling, finishing the run with a laid out backflip landing fakie. J.P. boosted the first hit bigger than any other skier or snowboarder, nearing 15 feet out {still pretty impressive!}, to the crowd’s delight. Even with an untimely fall in his run, J.P. still ended up in the number two spot. A definite crowd pleaser in the halfpipe event was 16-year old Frenchman Candide Thovex {Memories}, with his attemps at enormous rodeo flips.
The lack of snowfall this year in Riksgransen made the usual location of the famous natural quarterpipe obsolete, and contest organizers were forced to build their own quaterpipe by hand. This involves piling tons of snow in one place, and then digging out twenty foot tall transitions. The quarterpipe contest drew hundreds of spectators up in the misty fog of Riksgransen. This was J.P. Auclair’s day, boosting 15 plus feet out of the quarterpipe over the heads of spectators and photographers, smooth as butter, grabbing and stomping every attempt. Dave “Gravy” Keam spun a monstorous 540 (The more things change…}, which was accented greatly by his yellow and black zebra fuzzy pants whipping in the wind. Motoki Shimomura {The first Shimo sighting!} from Japan went full on Kamikaze style maching into the quarter way too fast, launching huge airs, landing on the deck, and going for more. Thovex, the French wonderchild, attempted a 720 rodeo flip, but caught an edge on takeoff and proceeded to twirl out of control 12 feet above the lip. Kent Kreitler hucked a perfect McTwist to crash on the lip, leaving his first straight air as his only run to score.
By the time the results from the halfpipe and quarterpipe were averaged together, J.P. stood tall on the podium. After J.P. had received his 10,000 Swedish croners (around $2,700 US), he walked over to J.F. and handed him a thousand croners. “Ten percent rule,” he explained, smiling. The best thing about J.F. receiving the 10 percent is that he promptly declared, “this is drinking money,” and proceeded to spend it all in the bar that night {… the more they stay the same!} Nice little relationship. What happens when the winners are taking home $50,000? {Are we there yet?}

hahaha! great fun!

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