Calshot Climbing and Snowboarding Festival

On	Sunday 18th January 2004 (1685 days ago)
Location	Calshot Activities Centre , United Kingdom

A small comp on a small hill, but with all the fun of the fair.

Details

Review

Gallery

[Words by Sherman, one of our Reporterz.]

Last Sunday saw the annual snowboarding and climbing festival at Calshot Activities Centre in Southampton.

Now for those of you who are familiar with Calshot will know of is restricted size but for those of you who aren’t, let me paint you a little picture. The Calshot dryslope is in an old aircraft hanger along with a plethora of climbing walls and a velodrome (one of those circular cycling tracks). It’s only about 60m long but it’s covered in snowflex and indoors so you can ride it in any weather and stay nice and dry. Not that it mattered on Sunday cause the sun had got his hat on and was coming out to play.

They’ve got an amazing array of rails courtesy of the Yellowsnow Cru and a couple of whippy little kickers to tickle your taste buds, as well as a cool little bar to hang out in for a bit of après ski flavour if you fancy it.

Now that you’ve got a mental image lets get back to the competition. It was a big air only comp with just the two kickers but the rails were out to play on anyway. Practice started off early at 11am with the qualifing for the final due to start at 1pm.

Although, it didn’t go exactly to plan. With regular sponsors of Calshot events, Just Add Water & Snow and Rock chipping in £1400 worth of prizes you might have thought there would be a good few riders getting in the mix for a taste of the glory, but unfortunately not. The grand total of all the boarders for the entire day was (drum roll please)….eight….

EIGHT! No girls, only four juniors and four seniors. EIGHT riders!!!

This was the quietest comp I have ever been to. The staff delayed the start until 2pm to see if anyone else would show, but to no avail.

So after a half an hour warm up everyone had qualified for the final as expected so the standard 3 run format kicked off with the juniors up first. Still as competitive as ever the groms dropped in one by one, each in turn searching their own bags of tricks trying to out do each other until …………. dropped in and span a sweet bs360. The gauntlet had been thrown down but none could step up and it ended with ……… the victor. He walked away happy with some Just Add Water vouchers for his trouble.

As one man once said “You have to spin to win”.

As there weren’t any women to compete it was straight over to the mens. Again with only four riders in the mix it wasn’t going be a very long final but the atmosphere was so relaxed I don’t think anybody really cared anyway. First up was Andy Stewart a Calshot local who stomped out a nice floaty bs180 to kick off the proceedings then followed it up with consitant bs 3’s, which seemed to be the order of the day. Kieron Howard another Bournemouth rail monkey had come along to show off his wears and rocking a 12yr old board held together with screws! I kid you not. But the boy done good, spinning bs 1’s and 3’s, tweaking as far as any man could. By the 3rd round it was pretty tight between Andy and Kieron. So Kieron took matters into his own hands and stepped up for a switch butter to bs180. Only to stack it on landing so the title and some more Just Add Water vouchers went to Mister Stewart.

Myself and Ben “Boris” Lloyd were representing the Yellowsnow Cru and walked away in 3rd and 4th place respectively.

As you may have guessed the level of riding wasn’t as spectacularly amazing as you’d find at a normal comp, but then again it’s calshot, the smallest slope in the world, the one hit wonder.
As they didn’t give out the majority of the prizes there is word of a comp on a Wednesday night sometime soon so I’ll keep you posted if anyone is interested.

It didn’t actually feel like a comp either, we were just out riding with our mates, egging each other on, taking the proverbial and having fun. At the end of the day, surely that’s what it’s all about?

So roll on next year, the smallest comp in the world on the smallest slope in the world!

The Results:
Juniors:
1st –
2nd –
3rd –

Seniors:
1st – Andy Stewart
2nd – Kieron Howard
3rd – Sherman
4th – Ben “Boris” Lloyd

---

The event profile for Calshot Climbing and Snowboarding Festival can be maintained by SCUK or the event organisers. If you want a login and password or have any information you think we ought to be displaying here for Calshot Climbing and Snowboarding Festival then email dunx@snowboardclub.co.uk

Page views: 2093
Page updated:
     20 May, 2004

Calendar Admin Login 
Event Admin Login