On Sunday 25th & Saturday 26th of April Sunshine Village, Banff, Canada hosted The Playground Mini Slopestyle comp 2009.
The skate park style course consisted of various bonks, rail jibs, wall rides and hips for the competitors to throw down and get creative. The judges were looking for consistency, creativity and amplitude to decide the winner for each day. In addition, there was a best trick jam session where the judges were literally throwing cash at the riders who stomped the smoothest and most impressive tricks.
Saturday was the snowboarders only competition. The weather was a mixture of sunny and snowy intervals. The crowd was one big melting pot of local Calgarians, seasonal residential Aussies, Brits and intenational visitors from countries such as Russia and Sweden to name a few. With background music provided by the Team Canada Deejays riders had the choice of their own Mp3 playlists or the beats of these popular Canadian music makers.
As the hour long main slopestyle event took place an array of snowboarding hammers were thrown. Front flips off the up box by Dangerous Dave McGlade, smooth backflips courtesy of local shred Jake Bauer and some insanely huge corked back sevens by Albertan stylist Jay Greztzinger. Jay was killing it all day, a clear crowd favourite and riders choice. A slim bearded guy with super skinny pants impressed the judges enough with his consistent runs to secure the title of The Playground comp champion of 2009. Gutsy runs from Callie saw her place first out of the three girls that entered and as if $250 wasn’t enough, this happy go lucky female shredder fancied her chances of winning the big bucks. Up for grabs was $1000 for an all together less physically demanding competition.
The Coors Light Bikini contest was hard fought with 17 females (2 possible pre-ops) braving the savage snowball throwing crowd . One of the judges was The Stills Bass guitarist who cheekily noted his hotel room number as he displayed his scorecard to the girls he rated. Blonde and bubbly Monica Bouis reined as Bikini winner 2009, taking home $1000 and numerous phone numbers.
Sunday was the Skiers only portion of the event. Only a handful of skiers registered for the comp so the previous days riders were cordially invited to make up numbers.
The freestyle skiers dropped in for their runs and appeared to enjoy the coure with various jibs and spins. Chris Bouis hucked big rotations off the hip and attempted a double back flip. Mikey Capel layed down some steezy rail combos and provided some smooth spins off the hips much to the delight of the compact crowd.
The snowboarders, who actually outnumberred the skiers in this ’skiers only’ event, rode the course with some mellow fun runs. These runs as agreed in the competitors meeting were just for pure pleasure. The real trickery was yet to come in the form of the cash giveaway for the Best trick jam. Both riders and skiers threw down with style or reckless abandonment all for their share of the dollar bills.
The deserved winner for the day was Kyle Armstrong. Kyle stomped trick after trick with consistency, creativity and style throughout the judged main event. He took home ice jug trophy filled with Coors Light beer, a brand new pair of skis, cash prize money and extra cash from stomping tricks during the jam session.
Zack Chamberlin laid down a silky smooth front one switch nosepress back one on the toe jam box and gained some much deserved cash. Last years winner Dwayne Wiebe, a local Calgary Pro rider stomped trick after trick to amass a nice wedge of cash to take home. He popped huge floaty methods off the hip and landed some clean cab 270 on 270 off variations on the toe jam box.
Above all a creative, chillaxed weekend up at Sunshine was had by all. With the amount of cash being awarded who’d have thought there was a credit crunch…until next year!
