For the opening night here in Tignes, Men’s Superpipe qualifications and Women’s Superpipe Final was on the program. Here’s what went down.

The 8 female pipe riders ended up the action night in style on the perfectly shape half tube. Kelly Clark took the early lead with a clean and technical run noted 87.66 that included a first hit 10 linked with a massive 7 and a Front Rodeo. Definately a run above the rest, already on the first of her 3 runs… Just in front of the young Arielle Gold (only 16) who obviously wasn’t too impressed to be here, and landed her run perfectly with two 9s and two 5s, and 83 points.

Before the last of their 3 runs, the standings were as follow: Clark, Gold, Teter, Bleiler, Hight, Schaffrick, Farrington, Hollingsworth. First of the leading girls to drop in, Hannah Teter sends of a marvelous 9 on her first hit… Before landing flat and losing all her speed half way down. She won’t improve. Then it’s Bleiler; she bails her last hit and doesn’t improve either. Same story for Arielle, but she can be proud of herself.

We could feel it coming as the last possible contender for the podium drops in for the last time: Elena Hight. Despite a real good effort – back-to-back 7s and 9s – that sends her at the second place. Sealed! Kelly says hello to the crowd with huge straight airs all the way, and cash a meaty $30.000 check.

Women’s Superpipe final standings:

1. Kelly Clark  87.66
2. Elena Hight 85.00
3. Arielle Gold 83.00
4. Hannah Teter 80.66
5. Gretchen Bleiler 64.33
6. Maddy Schaffrick 60.33
7. Kaitlyn Farrington 59.66
8. Ellery Hollingsworth 55.00

On the men’s side, the elimination round went down just before the women’s final, and no big surprised happened to the favorites, except maybe for Markus Malin who took an early way out. Iouri Podladtchikov was also pretty close to the exit before pulling the 3rd best run of the night including a Crippler Nose, back 9 and Cab double. Vito was leading the bunch from the start with a realy impressive run including a Crippler Dub. The local crowd will be supporting a Frenchie in final, Arthur Longo, who was clean and high all the way, even on his double. On an overall impression, we didn’t see any breathtaking run but hey, it was qualis, right? And the crowd loved it, tomorrow will be a great show for sure.

So here are the riders qualified for the Superpipe final tomorrow (Thursday) at 6.pm CET.

1. Louie Vito

2. Scotty Lago

3. Iouri Podladtchikov

4. Christian Haller

5. Luke Mitrani

6. Arthur Longo

7. Peetu Piiroinen

8. Benji Farrow

The rest of the program:

Thursday, 21st March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle eliminations
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Men’s Ski Slopestyle final

- 3:00 pm: Women’s Ski Slopestyle final

- 6:30 – 7:45 pm: Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 10 pm: Men’s Ski Ski SuperPipe eliminations

Friday, 22nd March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 6:30 – 7:45: Men’s Ski SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 9:45 pm: Women’s Ski SuperPipe final

Stay tuned! And once again, if you’re at the event, don’t hesitate to use the Hashtag #xgamesnow on everything related to the X Games in Tignes! Our Top 10 Grams and Tweets daily win Onboard subs and overall favorite wins a bag of swag including a snowboard!

Chas Guldemond gets wild on the slopestyle in yesterday’s training session. Photo: Tristan Shu

The snow is back on Tignes today, but it should clear up later this afternoon and the forecast for the other two days of competition, tomorow and Friday, are pretty good. The real snowboard action will start tonight with the men’s Superpipe eliminations at 6.30pm followed by the women’s Superpipe Final.

At the moment, snow is still falling quite heavily on the French resort and seeing that the Final of the ski women slopestyle has been pushed back to tomorrow, we might see some some delays happening today, but luckily this should all clear up by late afternoon to let the boys and girls in the pipe list to throw down as expected.

The good news is, the forecast for the rest of the event – tomorrow and Friday – is really good and we should see a nice bluebird like yesterday where all the riders (and editors) made the most of the fine March powder that Tignes granted us with. After this fluffy and sunny morning yesterday, Mark McMorris, Louie Vito, Kelly Clark and Jamie Anderson were the snowboarder’s representatives at the pre-event press conference, and all sounded pretty stoked on both courses: superpipe and slopestyle. The superpipe is of epic proportions – 180m long, 19m wide and 7m high – although McMorris admitted that the jumps on the slopestyle were not the biggest. Will that open up more possibilities for the underdogs? “Not really” answered the Canadian, adding that with such a stacked line up of riders, “everybody can win”. Indeed, we would have a hard time giving you an obvious favorite with such a rider list, both for slopestyle and pipe… Maybe on the girls side of things will it be a little more predictible, with the presensce of ultra favorites Kelly Clark and Jamie Anderson, respectively for halpipe and slopestyle. So the best is to be in front of your TV or computer from 6:30pm this afternoon for the men’s superpipe qualifiers followed by the women’s superpipe final. And if you can’t, check back here tonight and you’ll find out!

Here’s the updates schedule (with the delayed women’s ski slopstyle final):

Wednesday 20th March 2013

- 6:30 – 8 pm: Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe eliminations
- 8:30 -9:45 pm: Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe final

Thursday, 21st March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle eliminations
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Men’s Ski Slopestyle final

- 3:00 pm: Women’s Ski Slopestyle final

- 6:30 – 7:45 pm: Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 10 pm: Men’s Ski Ski SuperPipe eliminations

Friday, 22nd March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 6:30 – 7:45: Men’s Ski SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 9:45 pm: Women’s Ski SuperPipe final

oh, and the rider’s list is right here.

And on that bombshell, a few riders were willing to enter our prediction game, and here’s where they would put their money on:

Eric Willett (slopestyle) recons Scotty Lago will win this, but a close call between him and iPod. The Swiss Russian rider is also the favorite of Tortein Horgmo for the pipe.

Jamie Anderson was very much into the prediction game and chose Mark McMorris for the slopestyle, Kelly Clark and Louie Vito for the pipe.

If you want to see all the predictions from a mix of riders and punters, check this video.

And if you’re at the event, don’t hesitate to use the Hashtag #xgamesnow on everything related to the X Games in Tignes! Our Top 10 Grams and Tweets daily win Onboard subs and overall favorite wins a bag of swag including a snowboard!

Torstein Horgmo. Photo: Youri Barneoud

The Winter X Games Europe in Tignes has kicked off and so we caught up with one of the Slopestyle favorites to ask him about his season, contests, the filming, and a bit more…

How’s the season been so far for you, you must be pretty happy about the contst side of things right?

It’s been really good so far, quite different because I did quite a lot of contests. And the results for sure helps your motivation for it! I was actually planning to go straight to filming after the last Olympic FIS qualifier in Czech Republic but now I’m here in Tignes for the Euro X Games. It’s my first time here, and this is probably the last contest I’ll do this season before I start filming – I’m going to Whistler straight after this. But yeah lots of new stuff happening so it’s been pretty cool so far. Better than expected actually. Last year I focused a lot more on filming, so the contest side of things didn’t go so well. You know, when your head was more into getting shots for the movie. This is why I didn’t have much expectations on how I could do on contests this winter.

We loved Horgasm, A Love Story, and I’m sure you had a lot of good feedback about it, right?

Thank you! Yeah, it’s been a trip for sure. I got obviously a lot more feedback when we put it out for free. We ran it on iTunes first, and it didn’t really reached out as much as we had hoped, which I kind of thought it could happen. I wanted to put it for free straight away, went back and forth thinking about it… Now it’s still on iTunes in full HD, and also online [watch Horgasm here]. And people seems to be pretty hyped on it, so I’m stoked about it. It’s 2 years of my life, and it turned out to be a little different from what was there before, so I’m really pleased.

So now after this winter, even though it’s not finished yet, is it not too hard to do contest and filming quite intensively all in the same season?

I’m kind of used to it now! I just had to skip a bit the street stuff. It was a bit of a late start as far as powder goes, but I want to catch up on this, maybe do some heli and discover some new terrain.

A couple of questions on the X Games now. Mark McMorris was saying yesterday that the slopestyle course is pretty mellow compared to what you guys are used to these days, would you agree?

We had practice yesterday, the sun was shining and the conditions were perfect. Mark said that and it’s pretty much true, it’s very straight forward, quite a simple course as far as features go, but still pretty creative, you have lot of options, and the jumps are really fun. They are not the biggest, for sure, but you still have a lot of air time and it will possible to throw the big tricks. This is the kind of stuff I’m actually looking for: more air time for less impact. For me it’s perfect to end my contest season that way. I’ll have a smile on my face no matter what happen on the results.

Do you think this kind of mellow course opens up possibilities for other riders that would not generally have much chance for a podium?

It’s really tough to say, you never know what’s going to happen. This season we’ve seen a lot of new faces on podiums. Somebody does something new every time. The overall level has been pushed real hard this season, and it’s really exciting to be a part of that. Practice yesterday was pretty mellow compared to a lot of practices this year, so it’s even hard to say at this time.

Last question, who’s your favorite for the pipe Gold for this coming Friday?

That’s a tough one because you’re missing a couple of big players. Iouri [Podladtchikov] has got a good shot, Luke [Mitrani] as well, maybe Louie [Vito] too. I might put my card on Iouri though.

Despite shabby weather, the Winter X Games pipe is shaping up nicely in Tignes. Photo: Youri Barneoud.

We arrived in Tignes last night under heavy snow storm and today the training got cancelled due to zero visibility. It’s still snowing this afternoon on the Slopstyle and the pipe area, but it should all clear up for the beginning of the competition Wednesday.

As you know by now, Shaun White did not travel to France this time and (as we just found out in the press room) Japanese sensation Ayumu Hirano won’t be competing in the pipe either, but aside from these two heavy hitters it seems that pretty much all the other favorites are in Tignes getting prepared to send it in the pipe and slopestyle of the Winter X Games Europe.

Here’s the final snowboard athlete’s list. Action kicks off Wednesday – who do you think will win?

HALFPIPE

Men

1. Arthur Longo, FRA
2. Janne Korpi, FIN
3. Jan Scherrer, SUI
4.Benji Farrow, USA
5.Christian Haller, SUI
6.Aluan Riccardi, FRA
7.Taku Hiraoka, JPN
8.Nathan Johnstone, AUS
9.Taylor Gold, USA
10.Scotty James, AUS
11.Scotty Lago, USA
12.Markus Malin, FIN
13.Luke Mitrani, USA
14.Iouri Podladtchikov, SUI
15.Louie Vito, USA
16. Peetu Piiroinen (FIN)

Women

1.Gretchen Bleiler, USA
2.Maddy Schaffrick, USA
3.Hannah Teter, USA
4.Kelly Clark, USA
5.Kaitlyn Farrington, USA
6.Arielle Gold, USA
7.Ellery Hollingsworth, AUS
8.Elena Hight, USA

SLOPESTYLE

Men
Ulrik Badertscher (NOR)
Gjermund Braaten (NOR)
Chas Guldemond (USA)
Torstein Horgmo (NOR)
Yuki Kadono (JPN)
Sage Kotsenburg (USA)
Mark McMorris (CAN)
Aleksander Ostreng (NOR)
Maxence Parrot (CAN)
Peetu Piiroinen (FIN)
Ståle Sandbech (NOR)
Seppe Smits (BEL)
Roope Tonteri (FIN)
Sebastien Toutant (CAN)
Eric Willett (USA)
Jamie Nicholls (GBR)

Women

Jamie Anderson (USA)

Sina Candrian (SUI)
Aimee Fuller (IRL)
Silje Norendal (NOR)
Spencer O’Brien (CAN)
Kjersti Oestgaard Buaas (NOR)
Sarka Pancochova (CZE)
Enni Rukajärvi (FIN)

And here’s the competition schedule for the whole event:

Wednesday 20th March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Ski Slopestyle eliminations
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Women’s Ski Slopestyle final
- 6:30 – 8 pm: Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe eliminations
- 8:30 -9:45 pm: Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe final

Thursday, 21st March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle eliminations
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Men’s Ski Slopestyle final
- 6:30 – 7:45 pm: Men’s Snowboard SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 10 pm: Men’s Ski Ski SuperPipe eliminations

Friday, 22nd March 2013

- 10:30 am – noon: Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 1:00 – 2:15 pm: Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle final
- 6:30 – 7:45: Men’s Ski SuperPipe final
- 8:30 – 9:45 pm: Women’s Ski SuperPipe final

The dates are announced for the Quiksilver and Roxy Radar sessions, where groms can fight for a spot at the European X-Games and a shot at following in the footsteps of Mathieu Crepel, Travis Rice or Torah Bright.

There’s also one week’s summer camp and nothing less than a year’s contract riding for the Quiksilver or Roxy team on offer for the eventual winner so you can be sure that there’s no messing around with this bad boy. The contest is open to all boys and girls aged between 8 and 13, who can snowboard

Quiksilver and Roxy shops that participate in the Radar will be transformed for the occasion into talent spotters, with the winning shop being awarded a week in the Hossegor “Quik house”, as well as an invitation to the Winter X Games Europe, held in Tignes.

The budding champion has to complete three stages to realise his or her dream: riding for Quiksilver or Roxy side by side with his or her heroes!

Here’s how you can get involved…

1 Apply by submitting “Sponsor me” photos and videos with profile, via www.quiksilverlive.com and in all participating Quiksilver and Roxy stores, so he/she can qualify for a web preselection during January.

2 In February, a Quiksilver & Roxy Radar competition will be organised in the five ski resorts across Europe. The kids have to impress the jury with their riding skills, as well as taking part in video clips and interviews, before going online to be judged in the public vote.

Dates and locations:

6th February : Formigal – Spain

7th February : Bradonecchia – Italy

11th February : Saas Fee- Switzerland

13th February : La Plagne – France

13th February : Trysil – Norway

14th February : Lipno – Czech Republic

14th February : Kleinwalsertal – Austria

3 The grand final will take place in March, during the European Winter X Games in Tignes, during which the budding riders will than take part in a final jam session under the watchful eyes of their idols.

More info and event application can be found at www.quiksilverlive.com. Good luck, grommets.