It was all about rain during yesterday's World Cup halfpipe comp in Mont-Sainte-Anne. Usually a great pipe, varying weather over the past two weeks has not helped. Riders said it lacked transition and radius with some oververt, but due to an enormous effort by David Ny, FIS, and the organizing committee, who worked hard, it improved in time for the contest. Despite their efforts though, it was brutal as it started raining heavily Sunday morning and didn't stop until after the competition was finished. The men's qualifications were cut to one run with only 12 riders making it to the finals, which still featured two runs for both women and men.
Once the finals came, riders seemed to ignore the continuous rain and were going big. Canadian Trevor Andrew, 3rd after the first run, improved in the second and finally claimed the gold by 0.5 points ahead of his teammate, Brett Carpentier from Quebec, riding here on his home turf.
"The pipe was in much better shape today," Andrew said, "but it was hard to stand in the rain all day, getting cold and then going out for your run, but it worked out so I can't complain, but it's just not very pleasant. Anyway, it is always fun because we are all friends up there so it's not just competition; we always try to push each other to a new level, we try to go higher and higher. It makes it fun to see a friend do a little better and you're like 'I've got to try to do a little better than that.'"
Carpentier, sitting in 1st after the first run finally had to leave it to Andrew by 0.5 points. "After a break of two years, I just started riding again and this was my tenth time on snow . I did not care too much to be first or tenth — a win would have been great, but second is just fine. It was soaking wet and you just had to keep warm. It can't always be blue skies - that's winter, you've got to expect it. I just wished that it stopped raining for my run..."
Tuomo Ojala from Finland finished 3rd. "I usually don't like this kind of pipe, and it was too soft," he said.
With the lack of Swedes in today's mens finals, Magnus Sterner was the one to get the team a consolation by keeping the lead in the overall halfpipe World Cup. His teammate Stefan Karlsson sits in 2nd ahead of Ojala.
The women's contest was almost a repeat of the Whistler event: Norwegian Stine Brun Kjeldaas claimed the gold ahead of Japanese rider Michiyo Hashimoto again, but it was Yoko Miyake from Japan who pulled 3rd this time.
Kjeldaas did not feel bad about the weather: "I can even motivate myself when it is raining," she said, "it was really fun riding today. We all just got so wet and cold. I went down to my room after the qualification to put all my clothes in the dryer so I had dry clothes for the finals again... I think I'm pretty lucky to win all these contests. I'm happy that I am pretty consistent. I got here from Europe only last night and it was good that we had to get up that early today so the jet lag didn't hurt too much. From what I heard I really expected it to be very cold so I waxed my board for minus 15 before getting here but when I came up this morning it was so warm and I didn't have time to rewax it. From what I heard the pipe was so much better compared to training. It should have been a lot bigger but the shape was okay."
Hashimoto was feeling quite confident before the contest: "My teammates kept pushing me a lot," she said, "and the pipe was much better than in the training yesterday so I felt pretty good." Her teammate Miyake was happy with 3rd place. "I didn't really expect to do so good since I hurt my shoulder a couple of weeks ago in Tignes and it still hurts."
With her third win in a row, Kjeldass keeps the yellow World Cup leader bib in halfpipe ahead of Hashimoto and 2000 Vice Junior World Champion Anna Olofsson from Sweden who finished 9th today.
The World Cup takes a break for Christmas now with the next competitions scheduled for January 5-7 in Kreischberg, Austria, with two snowboard cross races and a parallel slalom.
— Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent
