Team News
Athena-Europe
Mar 20 2008
The past ten days I have been fortunate enough to travel over seas for the European Freeskiing Open in Laax, Switzerland.
On March 7, I said good-bye to Breckenridge and hopped on a plane to Zurich.
I headed over there a few days early in order to get used to the jet lag and get a feel for the terrain in Laax.
So after a few days of freeskiing in Laax, it was time for practice to begin.
The slopestyle course was pretty standard consisting of 2 rail features and three well built jumps.
The first feature on the course however was anything but ordinary, it was a large brick of snow carved out to be a sushi bowl, with 4 chopsticks resting on it which were the rails.
At first glance this feature looked a little troublesome to many of the riders, but after some practice it turned out to be a fun feature.
After one day of practice in semi-decent weather, it was time for women's qualifier's.
Unfortunetly the 50 mph winds, snow and fog made it impossible to run a slope event.
This pushed everything back slightly but ended up working for the best, as the weather ended up beautiful for slopestyle and halfpipe semifinals.
On the morning of the 11th at 9 am it was finally time for Women's semi-finals.
There were 21 women competing and all of them were absolutely killing it.
From these 21 women only 6 would move on to finals, and after a good 2nd run I was one of the 6 to move on!
Unfortunately, after semi finals we had absolutely nothing to do until about 3 o'clock that afternoon.
Everyone got a little sleepy from the waiting around in the warm weather but when 3 rolled around we were ready to kill it.
Finals consisted of the usual best of 2 runs, but girls really stepped it up a notch. Almost every girl had smooth 7's in their runs along with lincoln loops, cork 3's and 5's. This event really showed the progression of women's skiing.
I ended up taking 6th place which was fine for me considering my competition was all at least 4 years older!
The European Open was a great event and I can't wait to go back next year!
Laax is a fun mountain and we had a great crowd of people cheering us on!
Im now back in the US and getting ready for WSI.
Until next time,
Athena
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