air&style 2009 II

what a weekend!

after not posting for quite a while due to extensive (and boring) office work, the air & style in innsbruck is the perfect opportunity to return to blogging.

WEDNESDAY...

innsbruck was once again hosting the air & style, first time with a straight jump again. the whole thing started off on wednesday already. stubai had prepared a nice training kicker on the glacier and bluebird plus half a meter of fresh were not the worst arguments to start the weekend even one day earlier.

a lot of the riders were up there, training. grilo (picture above) amongst them, being one of the replacement riders in case, one of the main field riders get hurt. throwing down doubles already today.

after checking into the hotel in innsbruck, öfi and i went to the riders dinner and to the jimmys later on to start off a nice series of IBK nights. i love this town, its always nice to come back here, feels almost like home already :)

funny first night with iouri and travis, opening champagne bottles the fancy way. see for yourself in the next gossip of pleasure mag...

THURSDAY...

was rather a 'black thursday'... seb toutant pulled the worst overshoot ever, checking into the jump as very first rider. speaking of 'overshooting' does not nearly describe this slam. his highest point was at the half of the landing and he crashed from around 20m of height almost to flat. (see the two crosses on the pic below)

i could not watch the impact, thinking he would for sure die. sepp braun was the event doctor again and there after just seconds for first care. of course, everybody was shocked and nobody could think of riding anymore. after an hour, rumors came through, that seb suffered only minor injuries, being fully checked in the innsbruck hospital.

after these good news, the riders decided to continue training, also to get rid of the first shock.

coming back to the hotel, we finally got the (still unbelieveable) good news, that seb only broke the inner ankle and had some smaller injuries. what a relief! of course, we had to celebrate and ended up at jimmy's again...

FRIDAY...

2nd day of training, first double corks and heavier tricks. werni stock liking the kicker and easily throwing down one front 10 after the other.

werni stock

christian brecheis and i could not watch the training though, as we had to do portraits for the upcoming article. we borrowed a sword from michi zirngibl (thanks, bro... snus is on the way!) and lolli gave us his fog machine. cyril brought us a couple meters of black photo background (thanks for that, cyril!) and so we had a quite simple setup next to the riders room at bergisel.

we shot for full 6 hours and somehow managed to get good portraits of every single rider.

the day ended at weekender LATE... first time i checked the watch was 5 a.m. resulting in quite some hangover for the main day of the event. very clever, i have to say... :( hehehe.

mugl was voted 'most drunk editor' and we had to hide his face to protect the innocent! :)

SATURDAY...

the contest day begun with a big hangover. well, it was feeling like straight coming from the party to be honest. a nice breakfast (thanks bene!) saved my life kind of.

off to bergisel at 10, trying to prepare everything for the event. lolli came early afternoon and we checked the possibilities for our new flash project that we were planning for this air&style event. not too easy, as the air&style once again made it impossible to set up flashes anywhere near the table.

it was working out nevertheless and we were super stoked with the result of the shoot.

who else was super stoked, was of course grilo, who was the most consistent rider over the whole evening and so well deserved won the air&style superfinal against peetu, wiig and iouri.

well done, grilo! big day for slovenia :)

after a quick shower, we all went to stadtcafé for the VIP party, having the 4th super fun night in a row. met so many people that night, it was unbelieveable. thanks everybody, this night (and the 3 nights before) reminded me, how i love snowboarding and all the people involved. what a great family to be born into ;)

iouri and grilo, stoooked!

hasi was there!

silli, danger, toby and mr. shitface...

SUNDAY...

sunday it was time to move out of my new 'appartment'. peetu totally overslept (what a wonder) so i took him to munich airport. he had dinner invitation for later that day with the finish president, so he kinda had to catch his flight.

turned out to be an easy one, no traffic and a smooth 1,5h drive from IBK to MUC.

what a weekend. again. thanks air&style, thanks innsbruck for one of the most memorable contests ever!