LG FIS WorldCup 2009 – Half-Pipe

Now I know that this post is a bit late (about a week) but I’ve been busy with other items and have not had time. Though for those who are interested I had the opportunity to be an accredited photographer not only at the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Boardercross but I also was able to attend the Half-Pipe event which was held on the following Saturday (February 14th). A snowboard Half-Pipe event is usually the most exciting and most popular out of all the snowboarding events, or at least in my opinion.

What Is A Half-Pipe?

A Snowboard Half-Pipe is a pretty large structure and in the case of the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 event it was a monster 170 metres in length with a crazy height of 22 feet. Not to mention it has the incline of an 18 degree angle. I definitely wouldn’t want to accidentally slip off the deck to drop down 22 feet on solid ice.

Snowboarders (or riders) perform aerobatic jumps, twist, and tricks on this massive half-cylinder structure as they make their way from the top to the bottom. Did I mention is is usually hard packed (like ice) type snow? Something I wouldn’t really want to fall onto after clearing the deck by like 15 feet!

Inverted Shaun White

The tricks that the riders perform can be pretty insane to watch as well. There is the straight-air, grabs, rotations (which can go up to 1080 or even higher!), switches, frontsides, backsides and even inverted. The riders have to put together a routine while traversing down the length of the Half-Pipe in order to score high with the judges. If the rider falls in the Half-Pipe during their run their points stop so any trick performed (if possible) is just mainly for fun.

LG FIS WorldCup 2009 Half-Pipe Finals

The way scoring works for the Men and Woman’s Half-Pipe Finals is the better of the two scores the riders could earn out of their two runs. A maximum score a rider could make on a single run would be 50 points. The best score of these two 50 point scores would determine where the rider was placed.

Gretchen Bleiler & Hannah Teter USA

Sitting, standing, kneeling on the deck was a pretty cool experience for me. Being so close to the riders pull off their tricks in front of me was pretty crazy. The photographers around me (not too many mind you) had some pretty awesome gear, and some spectators had better glass than I did. Though that didn’t really bother me, I was closer to the action with a great vantage point for taking photos of these amazing riders. Though we only had about 2 to 3 feet of room we could maneuver in and after a while the snow under our feet would harden to ice.

Iouri ‘iPod’ Podladtchikov

Ryoh Aono

There were so many good riders out that day entertaining the crowd with their gravity defying feats that I didn’t notice that the whole day went by so quickly. Sure trudging up the ski runs with just my snowboard boots and camera gear was really exhausting and then having to climb up the deck of the half-pipe too was as equally tiring but the end result was a great day of shooting these riders strut their stuff.

Standings

Woman

• 1: Kelly Clark USA
• 2: Jiayu Liu CHN
• 3: Hannah Teter USA
• 4: Gretchen Bleiler USA

Mens

• 1: Shaun White USA
• 2: Ryoh Aono JPN
• 3: Iouri ‘iPod’ Podladtchikov SUI
• 4: Kazuumi Fujita JPN

Overall for my first experience seeing professional riders hit the Half-Pipe during the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 I walked away with over 2000 photos and a great first experience as a media accredited photographer. The LG FIS WorldCup 2009 PGS event was unfortunatly cancel due to poor (soft) snow conditions. Though the whole weekend event was great and look forward to seeing how Cypress and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics pan out when these riders come back next year.

You can check our some of the other photos I have uploaded from the LG FIS WorldCup 2009 event over on Flickr.

Filed Under: Events, Mountain Talk, Snowboarding
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