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 AIM Series 2002 - Indoor
Take to the snow at the Big Air, Boardercross and Slopestyle Championships. For novices, curious, goofy and regulars there will be qualified instructors and professional snowboarders at all four British events offering free coaching to under 18s and females.
The 2002/2003 AIM Series is over, at least for these shores and we'll have to wait a few more weeks before we find out who's pre-qualified for the British Championships in the Alps, March 2002. The current suggestion is Les Deux Alps, but that's not been confirmed yet. So how does an October Saturday in Milton Keynes compare to a week in the Alps? For many the AIM Series Indoor British Big Air Championships started about 7pm Friday night, with a host of riders coming down early to practice during Xscape's boarding evening. Things were not good. The snow was terribly slow and my own base (brand spanking new Burton Custom 158 - the yellow one) was covered in some black sticky mess after only six runs, which put a premature end to my evening's slope sliding. Luckily I'd volunteered for ramp building duties that night... as Spencer Claridge of AIM Series put it: The jump is a scaffold structure, much like you'd get at Board X, only scaled down obviously. There will be a team of scaffold technicians to assemble the jump and we'll do the donkey work. The articulated lorry arrives at 9pm and a fork lift truck removes most of the bulk and places it by the access point at the bottom of the nursery slope. At 11pm, my team of merry men will help carry the shit into the snow hall and load the Kassbohrer to transport it to the designated site (the first plateau of the middle slope, 1/3 of the way up). Once this has been achieved, I guess a couple of hours, it's time for a hot chocolate and then we can get into bannering the slope, which is piss easy and shouldn't take long. Whilst we're busying ourselves, the Kassbohrer driver will occupy his time building the boarder cross course. We are then governed by how long the scaffold team take to assemble the jump. They predict between 4-5 hours. Once this is completed the machine with the blower is then going fire snow onto the structure and we will have to distribute it evenly and compress it as much as possible. Ably assisted by a crew of about eight volunteers we set to and you can see how we got on in the gallery below. Suffice to say, it didn't go to plan with the scaffold boys taking twice the estimated time. We live and learn. It was hard work and people fell by the way side and were joined by others. I have the bruises to show for it. In the end we were all bolting the scaffolding together and getting the leading and trailing slopes fastened down. At 8am lessons started and we had to start clearing the mess up we'd made. A few jobsworths started giving us jip, but in the end we were able to get the last load of decking up on the slope and bolted down onto the scaffolding. We then rolled out about a tonne of special carpet borrowed from SSV on to the decking to help hold the snow and set about covering it in the white stuff. Luckily Xscape have just the machine for the job. Whilst the landing was being taken care of the jump was assembled. That was knocked up by Stu Brass (of AIM Series) outside the back door of Xscape, whilst the majority of riders were still enjoying the slope the previous night. Once the slope was ready the jump was carried up the slope in three parts and assembled. Johno Verity was put in charge of shaping the snow on the kicker and what a job he did. Barrel after barrel of water were lugged up the slope by Slope Patrol and Sainsbury's entire stock of salt had been swept off the shelves, seeing Saxa's shares rocket for a few minutes on the Dow Jones. The kicker pretty much lasted the whole of the competition with few signs of destruction and Johno was killing it to, which goes to show that if you build a kicker, you build a kicker you'd like to ride. Throughout the night, the piste basher was getting the boardercross together, with the crew shaping the whoops by hand. It looked like a good course, but we'll come to that later. The delay meant taking the difficult decision to cancel the slopestyle competition. Also, Xscape wouldn't let people on to the other slope to practice. All to do with maximum numbers we're told, but highly annoying to the riders none-the-less. Eventually the event got going and we started with the boarder cross. This began above the kicker, over two whoops, through the pillars and down a drop into the waiting teeth of two more whoops before ducking back onto the jump slope, up over the table top and down the steep landing of the big air to the finishing line. MC Warwood talked us through the run before the practice session started and my, how we all laughed as he almost lost it on the whoops. But as the practice session started, I think we all realised that both sets of whoops were perhaps too hungry and we saw the only noteworthy injury of the day, James Hammond, carted off to hospital with a rather sore behind. He was back later, thankfully, but not too keen to sit and watch the event. Although I'd pretty much left the Crew at that time to get on with covering the event, one sole member remained in the form of Pete Calsen. Pete managed to grab about an hours kip at about 8am, but spent the whole day manning the slopes and keeping the landings in good nick. He was there with his shovel and, joined by Stu, de-fanged the whoops for the safety of all. Despite the dental work, the course was by no means predatory. There were plenty of falls and the dismally slow snow saw people scooting up to the table top, climbing to the summit before heading for the line. If you could keep going on the whole course you could hope to do well. You can see the results for yourself above. Then it was on for the Championship title event of the day, the Big Air. We had two jumps, the main Verity kicker plus a smaller jump to one side. It was decided that because of the slow snow and worries about safety that only senior or older pro's could hit the main kicker. After the comp had finished, Laura Berry tackled the whopper and even with her considerable talent barely made it half way across the tabletop. The state of the snow meant that many of the lighter riders failed to get much air out of the smaller jump and the likes of wee Jamie Nicholls barely reached the jump at all. The story on the main kicker was somewhat different with plenty of 5s and rodeos on show for all. Perhaps it was the experience of the riders or simply the additional weight of those riders that saw them over the jump. Many of the riders had resorted to NotWax, Back to Black and silicon spray to keep their boards moving. The general tactic was to straightline it from the top and see what happened. Perhaps noteworthy events were Stu Brass (hiself) hitting his own jump and going absolutely massive and almost clearing the landing - don't forget you're retired Stu! Perhaps they had good reason for choosing Xscape over the SnowDome as it had been suggested that the ceiling wasn't high enough at Tamworth. Also out of retirement was Ed Leigh (former editor of White Lines and current British Air Guitar Champion). He did some huge rodeos 5s and snatched the title clean out of the waiting hands of Simon Brass. Look at the shots of the kicker and landing. Would you do it? Perhaps unsurprisingly many of the amateur lads were after a bit of that action. Josh Armstrong was the first down the slope after six Pro riders and just hit the big one anyway. Well, you wouldn't want to be the first to miss it would you? Narrowly missing his grab, the BS 180 turned into an exercise in self-preservation and Josh did some flapping (albatross rather than humming bird), hit the knuckle and bailed. However, that's the biggest thing he's ever hit by a long way and he's still grinning now. The whole setup was perfect for the main jump, tabletop and landing and the snow, however slow, was extremely soft for landing. The Big Air didn't see one injury and perhaps that's down to the great design by AIM Series. The whole AIM Series has been characterised by a willingness to try new things and grinning has been actively encouraged. After the Big Air, they tried to have a bit of a slope style, but it was a half-hearted affair. People went and changed and made ready for the awards. Stuff was dished. Grins were smiled. Respect was offered up and not just to the winners, but to everybody who fancied entering and just gave it a go. Whilst the event didn't go 100% plan, everybody agreed it was the best event ever at Xscape and the AIM Series will have taken away some valuable lessons for next time. We were then treated to a sneak preview of The Airship. We've covered that already, but what a film! Then everybody went home. Well not quite everybody. After 48 hours with no sleep and completely shattered from 28 hours at -2°C constructing the slope, I decided to tank it home in TheBoarder VW 1974 camper. Managed to get it cruising at 95mph, until it broke down. Called the AA and went to sleep in the back, to be woken by Nat Mayer and Jason Horton from Document, who rightly scoffed and buggered off once they'd realised I was sorted. So then we all went home. Well, not quite. There was still the jump to come down as the AIM Series had only rented the scaffolding and Xscape couldn't keep it up (so to speak); "not enough room during peak season". So the remaining Crew and a few extras got the slope demolished and the banners taken down. They finished at 8am and Pete Calsen, Stu Brass and Spencer Claridge were still there. Huge respect to them and roll on the "M" in AIM as we look forward to the mountains in March. We'll see you there. The AIM Series 2002 - Indoor event page can be administered by dunx (Dunx), stu (Stu Brass), spencer (Spencer Claridge) and office (Office). Page views: 7193 |
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