Quinnipiac student Michael Feldstein recounts his visit to New York City’s first ever snowboarding contest, RedBull’s Snowscrapers event.
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It was a night of chills and big thrills in the Big Apple, as the first ever Red Bull Snowscrapers took East River Park in NYC by storm on February 4th. Sixteen of the worlds best snowboarders, including Red Bulls’ own Travis Rice, Pat Moore, and Shaun White, competed in a freestyle event eyeing $100,000 in prize money, with the winner taking home a cool $50,000. With so much action in store for the thousands who attended the event, many wondered while going in, exactly where do you find any slopes in Manhattan?
New York is known for its high peaks, but in the form of sky scrapers, not mountains; one would have to be made from the ground up. A 90 foot tall in-run was built that launched riders off a ramp towards a massive and challenging 80 foot long 45 degree spine with landings on both sides, giving the boarders a large canvas to get truly creative with their best tricks. The ramp was an impressive structure, whose scaffolding was made up of old cargo bins that were retro-fitted so they could be stacked upon each other. It was a really innovative idea and the slope will remain in the park for the rest of the month where it will be cut down to 45 feet so people can ski and enjoy the park in the winter months. On that Wednesday night, seeing it illuminated from across the FDR drive was really a sight to see, especially with a beautiful moon and seaboard as the backdrop for what would be a night of pure fun.
Throughout the afternoon, the crowd filed in and continuously grew larger as anticipation built up (the same couldn’t be said for the temperature, which bottomed out somewhere around -7 with the wind chill!) and it was remarkable to see just how popular this sport has become. I interacted with some diehard fans; some from California, New Jersey, and to no surprise, Colorado. They have a passion for this sport as those do with hockey, football, and baseball, and they were willing to teach me everything they knew. It was intriguing and humbling to be a newcomer to the sport and seeing the enthusiasm and knowledge that some of these people had. Although I did do a little reading on some of the moves and tricks, that didn’t prepare me for the aerial show I was about to see.
The 16 snowboarders in the first round of the competition participated in a one-hour jam session where they had to consistently land difficult, distinctive, and stylish tricks in order to advance to the next round. There was no limit to how many times they could go, for they were being judged on quality, not quantity. Only half of the original sixteen would advance to round two, where riders would be paired off and compete for the highest score they could obtain after two runs. The final eight pairings were Norway’s Torstein Horgmo vs. Shaun White, Bjorn Leines vs. Travis Rice, Daniel Ek vs. Scotty Lago, and finally Terje Haakonsen vs. New Jersey native Shayne Pospisil.
The round would see notables such as White fail to advance, while crowd favorite Pospisil was gaining momentum into the final four, which paired off boarders and the one with the highest scored after three runs would advance. Horgmo went up against Rice and Pospisil took on the Scotty Lago. The round was highlighted by an array of 900 frontail and backtail tricks with Horgmo and Pospisil pulling off the highest scores and going head to head in the finals. Lago would oust Rice in the consolation bracket good for third place with Rice finishing fourth. All attention was now on the finals as Horgmo and Pospisil were ready to give it their all. In the end it was the up and coming Pospisil who stole the show and won $50,000.
It was a historic night in snowboarding as the urban backdrop of the world’s most famous city helped introduce the sport to the masses in a way never seen before. Kudos to Red Bull for putting together a fantastic event that was fun and exciting and, even in the frigid temperatures, was able to keep the adrenaline running! In case you missed this amazing event, you can catch a full re-airing on Feb. 15th at 5pm on NBC down at Playwright in New Haven.
