The halfpipe riders have suffered due to miserable conditions throughout the Nokia Snowboard FIS World Cup this season. Rain, lack of snow and warm temperatures have caused a lot of problems at previous venues, but not so today here at Sapporo-Makomanai — it was cold. Typically on Hokkaido island, the weather can change quickly from snowstorms to sunshine with cold temperatures, making it hard to built a compact pipe since the snow consists only of ice crystals. "It has been tough this week," halfpipe head judge Ola Sundequist said and until yesterday there were only a few who still believed that today's contest would happen.
Training was cancelled all week and only resumed yesterday when the riders could finally leave the hotel to practice. Some even still doubted the competition would be held as scheduled but the pipe finally turned out to be pretty nice and about 1,000 Japanese halfpipe fans were treated to a couple of excellent runs.
The qualifications were held under a mixture of pure sunshine and heavy snowfall, but it cleared up for the finals and at the last minute, everything was good.
Heikki Sorsa from Finland did not feel well yesterday and missed the training session, but he was in good shape today and finally claimed the win. A double spin at the end of his second run didn't get him a bunch of extra points but the spectators obviously liked it a lot.
"I just tried the best I could," he said. "and I really had fun with the sun shining and all those Japanese people around. I decided on the double spin only when I was going to that wall — it wasn't planned from the beginning. In the first run I did a backside method, frontside inverted seven, melon grab, fakie seven tail grab, frontside stalefish and alleyoop 540 melon grab."
Tommy Czeschin from the USA put in two solid runs and took 2nd place. "The pipe was so much better than yesterday," he said, "and everyone out there was riding pretty well so I am glad to be in second place."
Markus Jonsson crashed at his last hit in the first run but picked it up again in the second to pull 3rd. "I pumped into a kink and was scared that this would happen again in the second run but I was lucky it did not," the Swede said. "My runs had some nice variation of tricks so it went fine. The pipe was really good today, it was just a bit sad that we could not have this pipe the whole week - the riders were praying for the contest to happen while sitting in the hotel waiting. The left wall looking up was a bit hard to ride because it was pretty icy at the top with a kink there so you could have been thrown out into the bottom, but once you learned how to deal with it, it was pretty good."
Jonsson's teammate Stefan Karlsson took 10th place today after crashing in both final runs, though he maintains the lead in the World Cup standings. Sweden's Magnus Sterner, 4th today, is currently in 2nd position ahead of Jan Michaelis from Germany, 5th today.
Reigning Junior World Champion Kelly Clark won the women's competition, her first World Cup victory ever. "I was playing it a bit conservative in the first run to make it a good solid run. In my second run, I was going for it because I had the lead and finally stuck it. The heelside wall was a lot softer since it was in the sun, the frontside wall was a bit icy, but I liked it a lot."
Lesley McKenna from Great Britain took 2nd. "The pipe was much better than yesterday and I was only doing those tricks which I was sure I could land and it paid off. A lot of people were trying to do things which they are able to do in other pipes, but crashed. I just want to stick with clean runs. The walls were been pretty different — it was like going from summer to winter..."
French rider Doriane Vidal took 3rd.
Sabine Wehr-Hasler from Germany fell in both final runs and finished 6th. However, she keeps the World Cup lead ahead of Norwegian rider Stine Brun Kjeldass who did not compete today and Lesley McKenna, 3rd overall.
Asahikawa, situated about two hours from Sapporo will host this weekend's parallel giant slalom and halfpipe.
— Britta Semmler, MountainZone.com Correspondent
