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Killington Boarder Battle
Jan 22, 1999
By Brooke Geery
| Results |
The first stop of the ESPN Boarder Battle came to Killington, VT January
21st-24th, bringing all the camera's, bad announcing, and gigantic
inflatable advertisments with it.
The halfpipe competition started out the weekends festivities with
practice on Thursday and the actual competition Friday. For some reason
it seemed nessecary to drag the competition out for the entire day, so
qualifiers took place during the day, with the finals not happening until
7:00 PM under the lights.
Maybe it was the multitude of other competitions happening this same
weekend, or the fact that there was no women's big air, but for some
reason, very few girls even showed up for the competition. The grand
total at the start was 11, so they all automatically qualified. They
still took one run, but since none were concerned with their score,
there's very little worth mentioning.
The men's competiton was slightly more fierce. Over 60 competitors
showed up. Each man got one run, then the top eight automatically moved
to the finals, and the rest of the top 30 took a second run. From these,
another eight were qualified, making it a 16 man final. A home court
advantage was obviously apparent, with local boy Rahm Klampert sweeping
the qualifiers, ex-wanabee-local Luke Wynen taking second, and local
superstar Mark Reilly rounding out the top three. Canadian Justin
Lamereux had one of the sickest runs of the day, and despite a fall at
the end, still qualified 6th. However, Luke warned him, "Don't even
bother converting [the $6,000 first prize] into Canadian, because it
won't be going home with you."
After a four hour competitor's party, the finals started at seven. The
format was best of two, women first, followed by the men. Having the
finals at night, under 20 staduim style lights completely eliminated flat
light, instead the competitors had to deal with high wind, but it looked
much better for TV.
Now under the pressure of actual competiton, the most exciting part of
the girls runs was still when the follow-cam snolerblader wrecked in the
pipe and then threw a tantrum, putting a nice dent in the middle of the
flat. All the girls had similar runs, and the winner came down to who
did the best trick.
Sara Pehrson did a seven and tied for first with Amy Johnson who had a
backside 360 mute and an overall clean run. To break the tie, first run
scores were consulted, and it was Amy who edged out Sarah for the $3,000.
In third was Canadian National team rider Lori Glazier, who had by far
the biggest airs of the day. Catherine Nieves did the only backside five
of the evening, but had trouble keeping her board on the snow and had to
settle for fourth.
As for the men, all 16 involved proved exactly why they made the finals.
All the crashes were spectacular, and the runs not only super technical,
but huge in amplitude as well. There were no jitters from the size of
the pipe that plauged the qualifiers. It was actually quite a show, and
worth freezing to watch.
Suprisingly, no one convinced the judges that the wind effected their run
(although many tried), so there were exactly 32 runs in the finals.
Competitors dropped in qualifying order, so it seemed as the night went
on the airs got bigger, not to say that Rich Nesshoever, the 16th
qualifier, didn't go huge. When it came down to the end, however, there
wasn't all that much varition from the final scores of the qualifiers.
The only scandal of the evening involed Jimi Scott, who seemed to get a
few bonus "I just won the X Games" points for his run, and ended up in
fourth. Justin Lamoureux, didn't really take it well, and complained to
the judges until they switched him into 4th. Jerry Tucker had two great
runs, and spent a while in first, that is, until Mark Reilly's run.
Mark is pretty much known as the kid from Jersey who will go 10 feet out
even if the pipe sucks, so when it's good, you can only image. Combine
that with a few flips and a frontside seven, and you get second place.
It would have been first if it wasn't for Rahm Klampert, who despite
battling the flu he picked up at the X games, put it all together for his
final run pulling his signature 720 Crippler, and a backside rodeo along
with all the stock tricks, and placing him in first.
If you're wondering how the bashful Luke Wynen ended up, it was somewhere
around 6th.
Results
Mens
1. Rahm Klampert
2. Mark Reilly
3. Jerry Tucker
4. Justin Lamoureux
5. Jimi Scott
Womens
1.Amy Johnson
2. Sara Pehrson
3. Lori Glazier
4. Catherine Nieves
5. Stacy Burke
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