NEWS: Hetzel and Epperson Overcome Odds Winning Boardercross by Shanti Sosienski Three continuous days of heavy snow, wind, and fog hung heavily over the ESPN Freeride today as Andy Hetzel took first in the men's boardercross for the second year in a row at the ESPN Freeride and Erin Epperson passed through her final heat taking first in the women's boardercross. It has been a rough couple of days for the numerous contenders, who in spite of the nasty weather, braved long, drawn out practices and qualifiers that have been going on since Wednesday. The finals for the Freeride were scheduled to begin on Friday morning with the boardercross, however, due to snowy conditions on Friday morning, the boardercross qualifiers were the only thing completed that day. Saturday morning organizers had hoped a momentary break in the weather that was expected until noon, would at least allow a wrap-up for the boardercross and slopestyle finals. The weather moved in quicker than reported by the weathermen and before the morning was over conditions had once again returned to heavy snow and strong winds. There is no question that while non-stop snow is always a welcome sight to a snowboarder, this week's record-breaking snowfall has not been the best thing for this event. Had the event been a more "extreme" event on terrain worthy of three feet of thick, fresh snow, it would have been a different story. However, the white blanket that has been dropped on the bunny slopes of Sierra where the Freeride is being hwld, has led the riders to rename the event to the ESPN Slowride. And no discipline in the event has been safe from riders and photographers taunts. The big air has become the "triple small air to flat" or the "air and swear," while the slopestyle became the incredibly obvious "slowstyle" event. Today the "slowstyle" was especially evident as a total white-out made it difficult for the first women riders in the slopestyle finals and the judges to figure out which way was down the mountain. Many snowboarders felt the judging couldn't possibly be fair because the judges could barely see riders. But this is show business and the world of ESPN can't just cancel the event, so the show continued until even the high tech cameras couldn't shoot through the sheets of fog and snow. To top the day off a flier was handed out to all of the riders announcing that anyone who podiumed and didn't attend the awards ceremony at nine o'clock that evening, would be docked $500 from their prize money. This rubbed many of the snowboarders wrong as the long week and bad weather left a lot of the competitors incredibly tired and frusturated. Just to add salt to the wound, those riders who didn't podium, but went to attend the ceremony/riders party to offer support were informed that they had to pay seven dollars to get into the Tahoe Bowl, where the ceremony was being held. Some of the riders protested and left, others stood around kind of wondering what to make of the entire thing, and even more riders just didn't even bother to attend the "riders" party. The final day of the event should be an interesting one as organizers try and squeeze three days worth of events into one all while making it look good on TV. Isn't being part of the mainstream media fun? OTHER NEWS The ESPN Freeride Is Off To A Slow Start Fri. (Feb. 06 @ 1:40:PM est) FREERIDE COVERAGE: Aspen | Killington | Sierra-at-Tahoe SOL NAVIGATION: SOL | Scoop | Hardware | Industry | Circleplus | Push | Travel | Interact | School | Weather | Terrain | Compete | Mediator SPONSORED BY: 1-800 Collect | ESPN | Airwalk | USASA © 1997, InterZine Productions. All rights reserved.