HellerCopter: Hall, Dumont to tangle in Breck

By Published On: February 3rd, 2007Comments Off on HellerCopter: Hall, Dumont to tangle in Breck

The shoot-for-the-stars Honda Ski Tour hits Breckenridge, Colorado, this weekend for stop No. 2. The Ski Tour was trying to avoid any action on Super Sunday, but weather scrapped those plans. Draw your own conclusions, but I think it’s weird that they have “Super Bowl Sunday” marked on The Ski Tour Event Calendar.
    But I also think it’s weird that Canada has the Queen of England on its dollars, so…
    This will be one of only two THST stops where Simon Dumont and Tanner Hall will face off, and with the World Superpipe Championships not until March, it may not happen again this year.
THE SHOOT-FOR-THE-STARS HONDA SKI TOUR
hits Breckenridge, Colorado, this weekend for stop No. 2. The Ski Tour was trying to avoid any action on Super Sunday, but weather scrapped those plans. Draw your own conclusions, but I think it’s weird that they have “Super Bowl Sunday” marked on The Ski Tour Event Calendar.
    But I also think it’s weird that Canada has the Queen of England on its dollars, so…
    This will be one of only two THST stops where Simon Dumont and Tanner Hall will face off, and with the World Superpipe Championships not until March, it may not happen again this year.
    When I spoke to Dumont after his X Games Silver, he said, “I’d probably be a lot more upset right now if it weren’t for The Ski Tour.” He missed Hall’s score at X by one point, and we might see a good show this weekend as Dumont tries to win his second Ski Tour stop of the year.
    I have a feeling Simon’s aiming for a sweep.
    Skiercross action should also be hot, as Jake Fiala seeks revenge on Casey Puckett for in his words “cutting him off” last weekend at X.
    To this Puckett replied, “He says I’m dirty, I told him it’s skiercross!” Puckett saw Fiala’s shadow and moved left. In the video, you can see Fiala push off Puckett’s hip, then he got back-seated on the next jump and ultimately wiped into the course fence right in the finish apron.
    Daron Rahlves will be looking to prove he can do more than qualify well, with a fall in X Games finals at the first turn.
    So where are all those shredding women? Girls are in Utah with the Queen’s Cup at Park City Mountain Resort. Slopestyle is Saturday, pipe Sunday.
    In left-brain fashion, the chicks are going up against the Super Bowl on Sunday with the superpipe finals in the big, 22-foot deep Park City Mountain Resort pipe. Right on!
    Yes, that’s bigger than the X Games pipe. Yes, it’s bigger than the pipe at Breckenridge.
    The QC should be a sight to see with Sarah Burke, Grete Eliassen, Ashley Battersby, Jen Hudak, Anna Berg (gold medal, U.S. Open slopestyle), Kristi Leskinen, Angelique … the list goes on.
    So if you like to ski on Super Sunday, and like seeing beautiful women who rip, where are you gonna be?    

•    •    •

   The year of the double flip
    It’s an idea whose time has come.
    The trend undoubtedly started last year, even as TJ Schiller was blowing our minds at the U.S. Open with his incredibly high and never-before-landed switch 1440.
    According to Jakub Wester, Jon Olsson’s Swedish skiing buddy, the necessity of taking a new direction was apparent to the two of them at that moment.
    “It was like, all right, we’re not going to be able to match that (TJ’s 1440), so we have to come up with something new. And we were also tired of seeing the same switch spins over and over,” said Wester. Enough with the switch spins already! (As my grandma Sonia would say.)
    Olsson took the sport in that new direction last spring when he pulled off the first kangaroo flip in competition at his own invitational contest in Are, Sweden. Wester followed soon behind Olsson, teaching himself the trick on Swedish water ramps last summer.
    To see it, go to www.jon-olsson.com.

•    •    •

    Meanwhile, back at the Aspen ranch, Pete Olenick was working out his double back 180 to throw in the pipe.
    Olsson takes gold in slopestyle at the 2007 U.S. Open with a run that included the “kanga” then Wester goes home with a second place in the big air, with a kanga plus an extra 180, so he landed forward.
    X Games: Olenick takes third in the pipe with the double back flip 180 as his first trick. (Olsson wipes out in slopestyle, both runs.)
    And, Olenick will be in Breckenridge at the TST seeing if he can land his trick clean.
    Dumont did double front flips over the gap in slopestyle the entire week in practice, then in his second comp run did a double front flip 180 landing switch, but he double (coincidence?) heel-released on the landing.
    Quoting X Games slopestyle silver medalist Sammy Carlsen, “Next year there’s gonna be tons of double flips, and double corks, like Jon was doing. Not even necessarily flips but corks, going out of cork and then back into cork.”

•    •    •

    And after this weekend, ladies and gents, the big-mountain comp season kicks off with the second annual Telluride Freeskiing Open. This will be the first stop on the U.S. tour.
    The next stop will be the brand-new Squaw Valley Freeskiing Open.
    If you would like to see coverage of these events on Ski Racing.com or in the magazine, please let them know. Send feedback to info@skiracing.com or go to the SR Forums.

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About the Author: Pete Rugh