Team News
Tucker
Jan 15 2008
Tignes Airwaves action.
So I landed in Geneva, grabbed my bags and hopped in the car to head to Tignes. 6 hours later I realized that something was wrong. The drive was only supposed to take three hours. Apparently the GPS was on its own agenda. I was somewhere in Italy. I later figured out that it was guiding me towards a road that was only open in the summer that led to the mountain. I eventually found the mountain and made my way to the hotel and discovered that I was rooming with four frenchies, two of which are my Rossi teammates Xavier Bertoni and Kevin Rolland. We had a really good time all week with the language barrier which always concluded with some extreme laughter. The hotel served bread pretty much the whole time and maybe some salad. I’m a pretty picky eater so I always carry Ken’s Italian dressing with me. I can put it on practically anything I eat. It’s my survival food. We awoke the next day to a foot and a half of snow! It was supposed to be a practice day for the hip but that didn’t even come close to working out. Instead I got some of the best pow skiing I have ever had. The natural terrain there is nuts! I recommend using something other than center mount park skis in heavy snow. I awoke again the next day to another foot and a half of snow. Same story. After some Ken’s Italian on my bread and salad for breakfast, it was time to get ready for the hip. I followed the other competitors down to the hip. We ducked under the ropes and headed straight for it. If you didn’t duck the ropes, it takes like 15 minutes to get down following some crazy zig zag trail. The light was incredibly flat. The visibility was about 5 feet ahead of you. Vertigo! I completely lost the group of guys that I was following that consisted of Tanner Rainville, Mike Riddle, and the people and suddenly found my self dropping off of a 20-something foot cliff. Scariest thing ever. Luckily I landed in about 4 feet of fresh snow.
I have never hit a real hip before and it was a little intimidating for the first jump. The take off was so steep. The landing was so hard after the wet snow got packed in. Props to Rainville for some high and styled out 270’s and Riddle for smashing his knee into his eye landing on the top of the hip. (Riddle eventually threw down a cork 810 high mute that was not too shabby and stuck it in the competition.) I took three practice runs which consisted of a straight air and two flatspin 630’s and decided to save my body for the competition. After some debate about having the comp with the current weather, it was a go. I dropped in for my first of three runs down what seemed like a mile long in-run and attempted the flat 630 that ended up not so well considering I dragged my back down the whole landing. Second run consisted of the same thing. On my final run, I took a few steps up from where I had started from on the last two. I took a deep breath and waited. I remembered the basics of the trick and what I had to change to land this jump. I pointed my skis down the hill towards the hip and didn’t take one turn. I arrived at the transition, squatted down and popped hard when I reached the take off. I set the rotation, got the grab, spotted my landing, tightened my legs for the hard impact and landed. I was so pumped. I ended up winning so that was pretty cool. It is my first win at a major competition. Another shout out to Laurent Favre and Kalle Leinonen for some crazy air antics. Ok I have to go to lunch now. Awesome comp!
Tuck
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