Hot after 12 year old Becky’s recent 3rd place podium finish in the Junior Burton European Open, last week saw her being taken out to Italy by her sponsor Protest to compete in the Protest Rookie Fest slope style competition in Livigno in Italy. This event is a 3 star TTR event and attracts some of the best riders from all across Europe and even as far as Japan. The event consists of three days for the competition, first is a practice day, second is the qualification day and the last day is for the finals. With over 100 competitors this was going to be a busy three days. The last three days of the week would be taken up with Training with pro coaches from the Protest Team.

On Becky’s first day of practice she was lucky enough to be able to ride with Mikka Hast and Jonas Hagstrom from the Protest team. They were on hand to give advice to Becky and to film her practice runs.



The hardest thing ahead for Becky was that this event relied mainly on the four very large 11m to 15m kickers and would only include one rail. Becky coming from a mainly indoor riding background is a far stronger rail rider, so the first challenge would be her confidence on the kickers. With Mikka and Jonas helping her through practice her confidence quickly grew and she was soon attacking the kickers with gusto. Sometimes a little too much and she paid the price with a couple of nasty slams overshooting the landings.

That night Becky succumbed to a nasty sickness bug, that had her up being sick in the night. So feeling very tired and fairly drained she entered in to qualifications.

Each rider would have two runs over the kicker line, with the best run being their qualification score. The main problem all the riders would have to face was the 1 ½ hour wait between each run, with no warm up run. Becky’s first run was not good and she did not achieve the tricks she had intended to do. Feeling very low she had the long wait for her second run. This run however would prove much better with her pulling off and landing tricks on three of the four kickers. She then had to wait till 8pm for the results.

She was very pleased to find that she had made it through qualification and into the finals in 4th place and was only 0.2 points behind 3rd place.

With a much better night’s sleep and feeling much fitter she was ready the next day for the finals. All finalist’s would have three runs this time and with a lot fewer competitors the turnaround for each run would be far quicker.

Becky managed three clean runs pulling off a nose grab to old school stale fish, a huge monster styled method grab, this has become a bit of a trade mark trick for her, and finally on the largest of the four kickers a front side indie grabbed 180. This was enough for her to hold on to her 4th place position in the finals.

1 Maria Delfina Maiocco (Ita)
2 Katerina Vojackova (Cze)
3 Chloe Sillieres (Fra)
4 Becky Menday (GBR)

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