Tag / Burton Open

Land of the rising sun and infinite powder, or so you thought. The last ten days or so have not been nice to us with fresh snow and rays of sunshine few and far between. The Asian Open came and went which was dominated by one man; Chas Guldemont. Here he is coping with Japan downtime by sitting beside a self playing grand piano. Many who were here would argue this piano held the spotlight as much as Chas did this last week….its playing as i write this!

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Wow, what a hectic few weeks. I’m enjoying my first proper day off since the beginning of the year. Even though its a beautiful blue sky outside sometimes your body just needs a rest. I spent the first two weeks of January over in Laax and enjoyed day after day of bluebird conditions. The Burton Open came and went with the standard of riding you’d expect from such a line up of riders. 

We lost two of the crew to injury whilst in Laax as Paul and Alicia had to fly back to Australia – I hope they make a speedy recovery. 

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The new year trip is now in full swing. I’ve been over in Laax in Switzerland for a week now. If you put the town aspect and the complete inability to eat any reasonably priced food (yesterdays meal plan: bowl of cereal, an orange, 1 packet of crisps) to one side then oh my god. Is Laax heaven? Could it be the best resort in the world? I’ve been to a few and this rates close to the top, if not the top.

I’ve hooked up with What feels like team Australia for the next month. Here’s the crew……..

Left to right; Paul McMahon, Michaela Davis-Meehan, Hugh Marsden, Alicia Barker and me at the end

Paul’s the coach of the other riders who are on a Fastride camp over here in Europe. We’re in Laax now to ride, to shoot and for the Burton European Open that starts off tomorrow. What can i say? Completely stoked on Laax, completely stoked on the guys i’m with, completely stoked on the weather (so far) and completely stoked on the vibe (eating for pleasure not included).

I’m going to try and do a “shot of the day” for the next week. Today was mens training for the halfpipe so it seems an apt place to start.

Sick Japanese riders name unknown!

I’ve just spent the last week up at snowpark for the Burton Open. The weather played its part as we had cloud, fog, freezing rain and pretty much all other types of bad weather. My camera decided to start failing me on the final day of competition which bumped the stress levels up but with the sun coming out on the last runs of the day, everything came together to get some wicked shots. 

Mikkel Bang dominated the slopestyle on Friday with his awesome run including a switch back 900 over the larger of the kickers. Kazuhiro kokubo, one of the Burton global team stepped up to take out the halfpipe final on Saturday but it was Daisuke Murakami who came out with the best trick with a frontside 1080 tailgrab. On the womens front it was all about one girl; jamie Anderson. She won the slopestyle on friday and the halfpipe on saturday – basically killed it. 

Apart from my camera worries on the last day, i had a great time shooting the contest overall. One of my photos made it into one of the New Zealand sunday papers which was a nice finish to the very long and tiring week.