mitch blog

my friend harry putz did edit a short clip following my riding through the Freeride World Tour stops of Chamonix-Engadin-Sochi-Fieberbrunn-Verbier. enjoy, i am getting ready for a trip to Norway…

RIDING TO THE TITLE from FREILUFTDOKU on Vimeo.

After not much snow for the whole season here in Austria the conditions on the Wildseeloder in Fieberbrunn were difficult. The lookers left side, facing more north seemed to be filled in with some old powder which would produce a lot of sluff when riding there, on the lookers right side which is more east facing we expected hard snow that may turn into spring snow with the morning sun. Like my Austrian mates who finally finished on the podium i went for the gamble and did hope for soft spring snow on the to me more interesting lookers right side of the mountain. Early morning on the event day some fön wind already started to hit the mountains making me a little nervous for the snow conditions. But when i dropped in with  bib number 4 the snow was just right. Feels great to finally win after trying hard the whole season and to share the podium with Max Zipser and the british gentlemen James Stentiford. I am also stoked to see skier Stefan Häusl winning his first Worldtour event in front of Reine Barkered and the local and hero Hauni Haunholder. Good vibes, great organisation, sorry for the last skiers who had to ride with flat light. Sorry also for one of the strongest snowboarders on the tour, Matt Annetts who broke his knee cap in sochi last week and is out for the rest of the season.

my line choice on the lookers right of the wildseeloder

and here a link to the story on our favorite radio station in Austria, Heinz Reich for Fm4

We all know that judging in freeriding can be very tough, that after almost every event there are  discussions with at least two different point of views. This situations are `normal´ for a judged sport, and as an athlete you have to learn to take that decisions  that will sometimes be to your advantage and sometimes to your disadvantage. A judged sport like ours leaves room for different tastes  which makes it within certain bounds possible to argue for different results but in the end the judges are the most objective view we can get.

But what if it turns out after a two day competition that the judges made a mistake that changed it all?
When the headjudge suddenly realized while watching my run on the screen after the comp that what looked like an out of control almost fall to his team of  4 judges on day one turns out to be a clean little air it was alreayd too late. After rechecking the oints and the result list the head judge apologized for the mistake but couldnt change the results as they were already official and also couldnt change them because an action like this would open the door to after competition video rejudging in the future. `In soccer 50 million people on TV see that the ball was in the goal only the referee doesn’t!  and the goal doesn’t count!´ – i am not playing soccer.

The door to win one of the worldtour events is not always open. When it is and you are right there as an athlete doing everything right for two days in a row to take the win but than you fail in the end because of a judging mistake,  it is frustrating and leaves a bad feeling in the stomach behind.  It is even more frustrating when this mistake has an impact on the title race in the snowboard mens category pushing one athlete into a favorite role and making it really hard to almost impossible for another to still win the title.