Norwegian Championship 2013

This weekend it was time to finish of the season with the annual Norwegian Snowkite Championship, which this year was held at Bergsjøstølen. Even though the weather forecast said almost no wind at all, we weren’t to worried since they have a System 2.0 set up there with an awesome park!

The competition started on Friday with no wind at all, but clear sunny skies. Most of us spent the morning relaxing in the sun, eating waffles with sour cream and strawberry jam and riding cable, but after lunch the wind started picking up, so the competition was on. I had used the morning helping to prepare the competition area by instructing a snowcat to build some nice kickers and soften up the snow, and it turned out awesome!

After a nerve-wrecking finale between me and my brother, Sigurd, it was up to the judges to decide who drew the longest straw. This would be announced the next evening after the cable park competition.

1st and 2nd place: Just like last year, my brother and I took the top of the podium:)

The next day we started with some warm up in the cable park followed by a jam-style competition where the riders vote for the one they think was best. We had the snowcat to prepare the park before the competition, so the conditions were perfect. After some pretty intense heats it was time to go inside to drink some beers in the sauna while the votes were being counted and the dinner was made. The bar was set pretty high by my brother with some nice rails and tricks like backmobes, sbend to blinds and double sbends, all done with really good style and power. Even so I felt I had a good chance after landingh a front blindmobe, a 313, double sbend and an sbend to blind with an indy grab.

Trick: Front blindmobe

After dinner it was time for price giving and I was called up for the first place in both the Norwegian Championship in snowkiting and cable park :-) Stoked!  Really fun to take the top of the podium again this year with my brother!

The rest of the night is a bit fuzzy since there was a lot of alcohol and drinking games involved in the celebration, but we kept it going to 6’o clock in the morning. Pretty nice to not be one of the unlucky bastards who had to get up two hours later to do kite lessons:p 

I would like to thank Helge Stærk from Ål kiteclub for making this event happen, and Kåre Berg from Bergsjøstølen Hotel for buying a System 2.0 and running such an awesome hotel!

Results:

Cable freestyle:

1. Andreas Toverud

2. Sigurd Toverud

3. Helge Stærk

Snowkite freestyle:

1. Andreas Toverud

2. Sigurd Toverud

3. Helge Stærk

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Winter holidays!

After a period of really bad conditions with neither snow or wind, I decided to join up with my brother, Sigurd, at Bergsjøstølen. Even though the wind hadn’t been too good lately, they have a permanent system 2.0 set up there on snow with an awesome park. Helge Stærk, which runs Kiteskolen.no, lives up there and has just started his own film company which meant he had a lot of awesome film equipment we could use :)

As in the weeks before, we didn’t get much wind the week I was up there, but we got to ride a lot of cable! Enjoy the pictures for now, and there’ll be coming a film later.. Hopefully the Norwegian Championship will be held at Bergsjøstølen at Easters, so take the trip up there and have some fun!

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European Championship 2013

Just as the perfect conditions with snow, wind and sun kicked in at home, it was time to go for an other trip abroad! This time to lake Reschen in Italy for the European Snowkite Championship :) Some days in advance the riders received word that the freestyle competition was pending better snow conditions, but I didn’t realise how bad it was untill I actually got there!

ICE – Even though it might look like snow the competition area was all rock hard ice with just a little frosting on top

Very disappointed about the conditions, me and some Germans I met tried to go racing on the ice with little success. The people with skis did a bit better because it gave them more traction. but after a while we gave up and decided to go to wait for a miracle over night.. In the mean time we decided to go to the Billabong Air and Style in Innsbruck to watch the pros do their thing on snowboards. Awesome atmosphere, and the riders gave it everything they got to win! Check out this run by Norwegian pro rider Ståle Sandbech! INSANE!! The little hand drag at the end unfortunately cost him the victory and he ended up 5th.

Innsbruck ski jumping arena – prepared for the snowboard competition

Over night the snow had started to come down hard, but there was still not enough on the lake to do freestyle. Due to the lack of snow the competition committee decided to move the competition just across the boarder to Switzerland where there supposedly was 50cm of snow, and some wind. They also chose to go for a jamstyle competition where the riders voted for each other to ensure that the competition wouldn’t be cut short by changing conditions. This is opposed to the normal way of doing freestyle competitions with heats which is very time-consuming.

When the day was over everyone got a voting form where they wrote which rider they thought should win the competition. Even though the wind had been a bit gusty, the weather had been great and we’d had a lot of fun:)

We didn’t get the results from the competition before the day after but I ended up winning when all the votes was counted :D Really stoked!

Thanks for all the votes, and see you all again next year!

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