Comment Share Posted on Monday June 28th at 2:49 p.m.

Competish-on

THESE PHOTOS ARE SLIDESHOWS, click them to scroll through and check the captions too. 

So, the short version;

I spent a lot of Feburary through May travelling around Europe to freeride (big mountain) competitions, with Pete, Smoothy, Marc, Luke and others. This was called the Freeride World Tour Qualifying Series (FWQ for short) as we were trying to qualify for the Freeride World Tour, the highest level of freeride competitions. There were highs and lows, funny times and hard times. Read on for the longer version with the details.

And so... and so and so and so. First up - Flaine. France. Sam Smoothy gets to Cham a couple of days before the competition and joins us in bumming a ride with Scottish (Ally Watson). In the 1.5 hours from Chamonix we still managed to drive through a storm, forget some gear and run out of petrol. We meet kiwi friend and World Tour judge Dion Newport on arrival and he joins us for an entertaining riders' meeting where we gained one of our favourite European quotations: ‘We could put the orange stick front of the crevasses, but that a of lot work. It's freeride you know, you see a hole you don't jump inside!'

Day 1 of competition is Waitangi Day and somehow we managed to commandeer the soundsystem, hook up Pete's Ipod and crank NZ tunes. In the swirling mist Smoothy crashed into an elephant sized bomb hole and Neil got lost and missed his line. Only Pete qualified for finals with a big air and solid stomp in the one-hit mini venue, 5th for the day.

The sour mood was sweetened by the amazing food and drink on offer, so we filled our bags and attempted to shuffle off inconspicuously with a 20-litre goon of red wine. Pete frantically skated away, battling the oversized goon sack with competition staff in hot pursuit. He rounded a bend and dived into the trees- a clean get away! Only to realize he's lost his goggles and 3 lenses on the way. Smoothy and Neil use the goon to drown their sorrows, though Smoothy almost chokes on his when he uses a drained juice carton as a vessel- it's already been used as an ashtray. He throws it out the window of the moving car in disgust, unfortunately for the pedestrian who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Finals- the face is much longer and gnarlier but Pete skis a solid, fast line with two big airs. He takes the second air too big, landing on the crest of a third - a heart breaking yard sale. Back pats, philosophical yarns and the goon precede tree skiing and shenanigans before we're back in the car to drive 9 hours to our next comp in Engadin, St Moritz, Switzerland.

This first part of the roadie is reasonably uneventful, there are some beautiful lakes and forests but it soon gets dark and the French radio takes over the conversation as each of us retract into our thoughts about the first 3 star (double points) competition of the season. French road tolls eat our Euros but we wait till we cross the Swiss border to buy the cheaper petrol with Francs. I tried to stretch my French far enough to get the old pastries from a petrol station for free for the boys, but it ended up costing 20 Euro ($40 NZD). I battled to live that one down, but changed to subject to laughing at the German road signs (Ausfahrt means exit, pronounced ass-fart). One of those ‘of my god, I'm in Europe!' moments, on a roadie with friends. Freedom. We arrived at 1am, discovering friends Marc Walker and Luke Potts (honorary kiwi) asleep in our beds, who we spooned to keep the hotel cost down.

Engadin is efficiently Swiss German but we're efficiently team useless, finding out we're allowed to ski inspect the venue last minute, we end up unwittingly doing so when the competition has already started, narrowly avoiding disqualification. It makes little difference with all crashing but Pete. I crash the hardest, flipping 5 times down the hill after attempting the biggest air of the day. I smash my camera (in my bag so I could look at a photo of the face while at the top), dent my helmet and it feels like I folded my shin bone over the top of my boot. The pain is unbearable, it breaks me. I thought I had had bad shin bang before (bruised shins from ski boots) but this is something else, I just can't deal with it. Of all the injuries I've ever had- surgery on both my knees, fracturing my hip, compression fractures in my spine, broken arm, broken hand, 14 stitches in my head without anaesthetic, catching on fire, nothing compares to this. My Australian buddy Nat Segal holds my hand as I sob uncontrollably into my jacket hood in the ski patrol room. All the shit I've had to deal with for shin bang envelopes me like a black cloud; all the days I've had to cut short, the powder days I've sat at home, the choice between skiing in constant pain or giving myself stomach ulcers from eating so many pain killers. I tell myself I'm going to quit skiing. I'm in a dark place.

Pete skis well through exposure though and qualifies 5th again, in this higher standard competition. He joins pre-qualified Smoothy in the afternoon twilight to make a nervous inspection of the gnarly finals face, accessible only by abseiling out of a stationary gondola. They also get put up in a flash hotel for the night with gourmet food- ski bums only eat well for free.

Finals day sees everyone doing their best to blag free lift passes for watching/supporting/partying purposes. My crutches get me up the disabled lift, Marc poses as a faux flower boy for prize giving and Luke's luscious eyelids melt the impressionable young ticket lady. Up top, with helicopters buzzing and TV cameras rolling, Pete struggles to get the essential mind set necessary to attack the long and exposed face at speed and isn't happy with his run, coming in 17th. Smoothy's experience and training show through here (and the texts that Pete sends him from the bottom about the landings and snow conditions help), and he has an amazing run, skiing exposure and sending cliffs with pace and style. We can't stop cheering and waving our home made signs, his parents are there and his Mum cries. We know we've just seen something special. Smoothy wins the competition- the second year in a row a kiwi has won after Fraser McDougall took it out last year. Check out the video Luke made of the day at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEuPZdw11TY

I have to head back to Chamonix for work but the rest of the kiwi team represents just as hard at the after party, even being conned into doing an uncoordinated haka (Smoothy's Dad Ron included), wearing tight yellow tees advertising chewing gum. The partying continued right through the next day and night, including no pants ice skating, piggyback skiing and giant penguin curling. Everyone makes quiet and hungover drives back to their respective European bases, in contrast to the nervous and excited drives there. Smoothy heads off to Fieberbrunn, Austria for his next competition (with no previous European results we didn't make the startlist), with his win at Engadin he is at the top of the points table for the FWQ and in with a great chance of qualifying for the world tour.

I have to work for 13 days in a row in return for the time off I had to go to the competitions but at least it gives my shin some time to get better. I slowly start to get my stoke back for skiing and we go shooting with our flatmate Jono Wills as well as having a couple of days mucking around having silly skiing fun with our Swedish friends. Pow days and crud days, laughing at each other and skiing fresh snow in the trees during a storm when the visibility is poos everywhere else. This is real skiing, not the kind you see in magazines but the some of the funnest there is. I love it, I'm never going to quit.

We regroup in early march for our next adventure- from France to Switzerland and on through Liechtenstein and Austria to Slovakia for the next round of competitions, with three kiwis and all our ski gear in a 1980 Nissan Micra that couldn't idle. Stay tuned, Euroadtrip part two comes out next week.