The Girls Chew Tobacco in Norway: Halfpipe Night at the WSC

If during the superpipe semis I froze while watching under a clear, obsidian night sky, for the finals I, and everyone else, had to endure far worse: rain.  At least the look was cool, the misty air lending a mystic effect to the background and hazing the bright floodlights.  Only those who watched it on TV escaped the punishment, but when the world's best men and women double cork an arm's reach away, who cares about a little drizzle?

Someone had read the weather report the night before.  By morning, a full twelve inches had been milled away by snowcat, with the mission of cutting out the flat and rendering the halfpipe a real half cylinder.  It was to be fast.  The rain even helped, lending more water for lower resistance aquaplaning.  It worked.  See for yourself:

http://new.livestream.com/wsc2012/finalswomenhalfpipe

http://new.livestream.com/wsc2012/finalsmenhalfpipe

Later on, I talked with someone who knows a bit about the halfpipe: Terje Haakonsen.  He was pleased with the show, despite the weather.  "Worse is icy and windy," he said.  "A little rain we can handle."  Terje saw the benefit of running the contest in these conditions after sunset : "You can actually have cloudy weather and see what you do."  It helps when your event is guided by someone with sprocking cat vision.

What to say about all the tricks these pipe riders bedeviled us with?  Big, smooth, video game, scary.  The guys especially.  But the girls may have been the best part, the women riders, I mean.  Travel ten years back and tonight's feminine performance would have seemed impossible.  Loopy, inverted spins loaded with styly grabs, landings to bolts, from first drop to final air.  Only the crème de la crème were capable of all this, but that's the point of the World Snowboarding Championships—put them in the pipe together, and marvel at a few of the best girls that snowboarding has ever seen.  Terje brought it up unprompted: "I'm pretty impressed by the girls.  They stepped it up."  Future female riders, get serious because your bar was raised at the WSC.

I must admit, though, that I was also awed by the spectators.  Many hundreds showed up, some wearing merely Vans on their feet, and I saw only one umbrella.  The drops pattered on my jacket hood like a snare drum as I gazed on a crowd of smiles.  Most valiant were those who stood in a swarm to wait for entrance to the right-side pipe wall where only a limited number of people were allowed at one time. 

Why anyone would wish to walk up and down the treacherously slippery path, with snow stairs only in the lower section, is testimony to the WSC's reputation.  Young and old Norwegians and otherwise clung to the railing lest they slide down into oblivion on the steep, slushy, tracked-out trail.  I witnessed some keeling over wipe-outs—someone would go horizontal and crash, and I would laugh with compassion.  But it seemed the locals were used to such reversals.  They'd get back on their feet and keep cheering.  Even the girls in Norway chew tobacco.

Nothing could have dampened the celebrations.  Champagne overcame the falling water, and the grins were as big as the paychecks.  Props to the WSC for rewarding the girls with the same payout as the boys—$40k, $20k, and $10k.  Not only did the pipe finals show us where freestyle snowboarding is currently at, they also taught us that girls can go off as most of us boys can only do on the Xbox. 

Hats off to the WSC halfpipe champs.

Source: http://www.frqncy.com/news/2012/02/23/the-girls-chew-tobacco-in-norway-halfpipe-night-at-the-wsc?utm_campaign=blog_feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feed_reader

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