AIR & STYLE OVER BEIJING IT WAS THE BIGGEST SNOWBOARD EVENT EVER TO GO DOWN IN CHINA, AND WE WERE WITNESS. WORDS: ANNIE FAST
PHOTOS: FRODE SANDBECH
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e’re in an Olympic stadium in Beijing, China, it’s the first day of practice, and the bone-chilling Siberian wind is howling. On the upside, the wind blew out the smog that had been hanging tough over the city; on the downside, the 130-foot-tall scaffolding jump is sort of swaying in the wind—practice is canceled. But after sixteen hours in a plane over the Pacific and a lazy day cruising the black markets around the hotel, Scotty Lago has some pent-up energy that needs to be released. So he decides to guineapig the jump—he grabs his board and jogs up the 50 or so switchbacks of the scaffolding, past the construction workers in hardhats (choosing to bypass the sketchy open elevator dangling off the backside), casually drops in, clears the yawning gap, and lands—and with that the biggest snowboard contest ever to go down in China is green-lighted for action.
It took the crew of Chinese workers under the supervision of the Austrianbased Air & Style company seven days to erect this 130-foot-tall scaffolding mountain and another seven for snow lighting and other details. Marko Grilc stands in awe.
AIR & STYLE OVER BEIJING
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Sebastien Toutant didn’t have to land his winning Cab 12 double cork in practice, but it’s hard to say just how the crowd would have reacted if he hadn’t.
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“THERE ARE NO WARM-UP RUNS, NO CHAIRLIFT RIDES—JUST STRAIGHT FROM STRAPPING IN TO DROPPING IN.”
While it might be a new name to U.S. audiences, the Air & Style is the longest-running and biggest spectator snowboard event in the world, regularly packing the Innsbruck, Austria, stadium with 25,000 fans whipped into laser-light/Eurobeat fueled frenzies. The roll call of past A&S winners starts in 1994 and includes Ingemar, Terje, Rippy, Shaun, Trice, and KP. The invited riders for this year are familiar names mixed in with new ones: Andreas Wiig, Scotty Lago, Kazu Kokubo, and Sebastien Toutant you probably know, but Elias Elhardt, Gjermund Braaten, Seppe Smits, and Werni Stock are newer names on the big-air circuit. There are no warm-up runs, no chairlift rides—just straight from strapping in to dropping in. This is the way of the Air & Style. It’s professional snowboarding stripped down to its barest parts—a stage show of double-corks, 1260s, and other X-rated tricks. But why here in China?
Manmade big air jumps aren’t for the faint-hearted. Mikkel Bang shrugs and drops.
The interest in China, or more correctly, the Chinese market, is nothing new for “action sports”— in 2005 Danny Way jumped over the Great Wall; in 2007 Oakley and The Arctic Challenge held the Style Masters quarterpipe contest with Terje, Nicolas Müller, and Travis Rice among others competing; that same year Burton held a big air in downtown Beijing; every year more and more international riders are showing up for the Nanshan Open at the Nanshan Resort about an hour outside of Beijing (where there’s a top-to-bottom snowboard park and dedicated Chinese snowboarders); and just this year Woodward opened up an enormous indoor skatepark in Beijing. It’s the promised land of 1.3 billion potential participants and consumers …
well, unless you count the millions of people living subsistence lifestyles under a communist government that paradoxically has a roaring free market economy loading up those lucky few with the riches needed to ride, but yes, there is a market. There’s also this unconfirmed rumor going around that the Chinese government is looking to invest in hundreds of new resorts around the country. Andrew Hourmont, the managing director for the Air & Style, said the reason for coming to Beijing was that they had found great partners to help them pull off the event and added, “We liked the idea of bringing snowboarding and the snowboard spirit to a country like China and were very surprised about how well it was welcomed.”
Mikkel Bang got fourth in the end landing a flat switch back 12, that was sorta planned to be a 14. Maybe Innsbruck?
The official title of this event isn’t just the Air & Style, it’s the Oakley Shaun White Air & Style, but Shaun isn’t here to shred. His role is as an ambassador of snowboarding to China. He fields twenty-some interviews a day, riding around Nanshan with film crews in hot pursuit, and rolling around Beijing with a heavy “Shauntourage.” While he has two Air & Style wins under his long red locks, in 2003 and 2004, he joked that the only jump he’d hit in the last year as he trained for the Olympics, was on the way to the pipe at Park City. Maybe next year?
Scotty Lago was the first rider to hit the jump. He was also the first to discover that Facebook and Twitter don’t work in China—the horror!
The next stop on the agenda after the first night of practice is for everyone to pile into the tour bus to our luxe post-Olympic lodging at the Beijing Westin. The following morning everyone lingers over the mind-boggling international breakfast buffet—steamed buns, hot noodles, curry, sushi, smoothies; it’s endless and confusing, and is the only meal you can count on eating until dinner. And then we go back to the stadium for another round of practice minus the wind. The practice is followed by a press conference in a room piled high with Red Bulls and filled with media. Press conferences are big in China—everyone from each associated brand, the provincial governor, maybe the Minister Of Sport, or hopefully, The Minister Of Extreme Sports (yes!) stands up to dryly offer some words … and then finally the Riders Draw to determine the head-to-head pairings.
It all seems a little surreal in that conference room. There’s a sense of “will we pull this off?” from the event organizers. It’s no small task to put on an event of this size in China—for starters, large public gatherings are not exactly encouraged. There is talk that the government had bought all the seats. There are rumors that the audience would just be a mix of plain clothes and outfitted soldiers. There is a lot of open wondering about how this will exactly go off— will anyone even show up? But the next day all worries are laid to rest—the stage is set with beats blasting, an impressive light show strobing over the scaffolding mountain, and an eager audience of 8,800 streaming in equipped with inflatable glow sticks, and yes, hundreds of soldiers stationed throughout the stadium … some of whom look to be enjoying the show. The riders each get three jumps, and like all Air & Styles, this
one is about progression with heavies like Devun Walsh and Ingemar Backman on the judging panel. The go-to trick is a backside double-cork ten. Very quickly the field is down to eight, and then four riders competing for the 75,000 Euro purse. Seb Touts takes the beastiest wreck of the night on his second to last jump, flying through the air “like a ham” before coming back on his final jump and nailing a Cab twelve double cork for the win. It’s an epic win for the eighteen-year-old from Montreal who last year had broken his ankle at the Innsbruck Air & Style. Seppe Smits, a Belgian rider who grew up shredding indoor slopes, takes second with a backside 1260; and German Elias Elhardt gets third with a boned-out backside double cork ten. Seb can be seen later that night up by the DJ booth in a packed Beijing club toasting the crowd with a Methuselah-sized bottle of Moet Chandon celebrating
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“…AN EAGER AUDIENCE OF 8,800 STREAMING IN EQUIPPED WITH INFLATABLE GLOW STICKS, AND YES, HUNDREDS OF SOLDIERS STATIONED THROUGHOUT THE STADIUM …”
what he called, “the best moment of my life.” Scotty Lago is nearby looking dapper in his newly tailored Chinese suit, Elias, Seppe and everyone else piles into the club—because like all Euro-based events, the afterparty matters. The Beijing Air & Style is planned for the next five years, hopefully drawing a bigger crowd every year. But, you won’t need to travel over any oceans to see an Air & Style— plans are in the works to bring the event to the U.S. next winter. That’s right, Beijing in December, Munich and Innsbruck in February, and then the U.S. Stay tuned.
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W HAT’S SHAU N GOT TO DO WITH IT?