Sunday, August 28, 2010
ATHLETIC STUFF
Locals off to an early start in freeski season Event equipment hijacked at the boarder, but doesn’t prevent locals from skiing to a couple good finishes
Vail Mountaineer
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By Geoff Mintz Mountaineer Staff Writer Despite the low snowfalls and a hijacking at the Chile-Argentina boarder, the 2010-2011 Freeski World Tour seems to be off to a great start in South America. Vail locals Mark Filippini, a Ski Club Vail coach who won a Sick Bird Award on last year’s tour for taking the best line at a comp in Crested Butte, and Rebecca Selig, the 2008 overall champ, made the lengthy trip to Chile and Argentina for the first two legs of the season. Showing up in South America is a must if you want to contend for the title, competitors say. The men’s finals at El Colorado started off with Japanese kamikaze Yu Sasaki setting the tone for the men by amping up the speed and taking more chances with larger airs. The variable snow conditions claimed some of the top finishers from yesterday, including day-one leader Griffin Post, but wasn’t able to tame the likes of Drew Stoeklein, Mathieu Imbert and local favorite Chopo Diaz. They finished 1-2-3. It was a rough first outing for the Vail athletes. Rebecca Selig, who is looking reclaim the title after a rough 2010, took ninth out of 10 competitors on the women’s side. Filippini got a tough break, as he did in Chile last year, falling in a wide-open section before the technical part of the pitch. “I was a little bummed out,” Filippini said. “The conditions were variable, and it was difficult to have come from summertime in Colorado to skiing a huge, long, technical venue known as Max’s face, which is one of the best venues that we have ever had on the Freeskiing World Tour.” Filippini had the second highest line score, but that didn’t matter because of the mistake high on the venue. “I was definitely disappointed, but I should have come down earlier to get my ski legs ready for the comp like some of the other guys that did well,” he said. Trouble at the border Reports from Argentina are a little mixed about what happened at the boarder. Mountain Sports International, the competition’s organizer, says on its Web site that they were forced to bribe officials with t-shirts, bibs
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vail rotary duck race Ski Club Vail coach Mark Filippini sends it off a cliff on his way to an 11th place finish at the Freeski World Tour in Las Lenas, Argentina last week. Photo courtesy FWT.
and FWT credentials. However our man on the ground, Filippini, tells us that the equipment was hijacked and held for ransom. “We managed to get the comp of with one run instead of the normal format. The MSI crew had to rent equipment from the local shops, which is not up to par compared to the U.S., and ski around in jeans, which was pretty funny,” Filippini said. It’s a lousy snow year in Argentina, which is a place that can be pretty hit or miss, like Europe, in terms of snowfall. Most impressively, event winner Chopo Diaz, Sick Bird winner Drew Tabke and women’s champion Angel Collinson reportedly competed with rental boots because their equipment was traveling with the MSI crew’s truck. For Filippini, the second comp was quite a bit more successful than El Colorado, as he seems to have his ski legs underneath himself. He took 11th out of 39 male competitors from around the world. “I ended up getting a little redemption – not the re[See LOCALS START FREESKI, page 19]
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