The view from the drop-in. All photos: Youri Barneoud.

Kingsize city event in Paris last weekend saw Norwegian Fredrik Evensen bag the crown.

A mighty erection in the city of love.

You’ll certainly know – or at least have heard of – the beauty of Paris. But less well-known is the beauty of a place on Champs Elysee called Le Grand Palais. Tony Hawk swung his spotlight upon this giant hall last November when he brought his Tony Hawk Show to the French capital, and last weekend Orangina and O’Neill decided to take advantage of Le Grand Palais’ awesome space to bring a killer snowboard/ski/wakeboard/music event to the masses. And it was quite a show!

Fredrik Evensen backside rodeos his way to first.

Evensen. Focussed.

Le Grand Palais is a top class building which plays host to some of the most prestigious fashion shows and other such super sized events, but this time the organisers transformed it into a giant swimming pool for the wakeboarding, with a huge ramp with double hip for the snowboarders, and a master music scene in between. All this for the eager eyes of about 5000 people who came along to witness this crossover spectacle.

Gian Simmen, in the gates.

... and on the hip.

After last year’s mishap in NYC with the same kind of hip jump, we were thinking it was a risky decision to choose such a feature for the riders, but on the other hand maybe city events have seen too much of the classic big air so some kind of shakeup was for sure needed… As it turns out we needn’t have worried as this time around the hip setup actually worked – the riders were getting easily enough speed to fly over the hip, and the Ho5 parks crew did a tremendous job managing this.

L'Arrogs making the crowd go 'Oooooh!'

Here L'Arrogs shows you why manbags are so next season. Erm.

We nearly lost Mark McMorris in the training session as he was attempting the first rotation of the evening and landed flat straight on his back. Cue silence at the top of the ramp.  After taking a few minutes to put his mind and body back together the young and solid McMorris manned up and got straight back on it, ready for the team battle. The contest was divided in ski, snowboard and wake hits, with a team composed by a rider of each discipline. In between the action, DJ Cut Killer was spinning the records pretty nicely, as well as big French hip hop bad boy Joey Starr.

Seb Toutant and Marc McMorris. Two kids with supernova futures.

"Backflip, backflip, backflip..."

But it was definately L’Arrogs who fired up the place with the first upside down of the night – backflips are definitely crowd pleasers at such city events. His backflip was the beginning of a furious battle in between the teams, until Fredrik Evensen pulled the trick of the night (Rodeo) and led his team to victory. Style and amplitude were definately the key for the riders here, as it was pretty damn ballsy to start rotating big numbers on that double hip. After all, this type of city crowd are more into simply seeing men fly than switch backside spins, innit?

We are the champions...

E-wah, e-wah

It was then time for some more beats from Isia, Brodinski, Cassius and Etienne De Crecy to keep the crowd bouncing until 5 in the morning. All in all, it was quite some night in Paris!

Check also the official website.