What's New in Chamonix?

Kevin Rolland Launches into 1st place

Well, it's all over.

The hotel Diva that was the hub of activity for the first ever Winter X-Games Europe is no longer full of skiers and snowboarders, cameramen and journalists. Instead there are crews of staff cleaning up; hoovering the floors and clearing away all the remnants of what was one of the best competitions Tignes has ever seen.

The Winter X-Games Europe was a great success. A stripped down version of the event in America, with just slopestyle and halpipe, it never the less brought some of the best freestyle skiers and snowboarders on the planet to Tignes and entertained the crowds who gathered for three days of incredible action.

Last night it was the men's snowboard halfpipe final. After another beautiful sunny day the sun began to set and the lights at the side of the pipe came on. The line up was an impressive who's who of progressive snowboarders and there was an expectant buzz of excitement as a number of Olympic riders took to the hill.

The final winner was Iouri Podlatchikov, with Matheiu Crepel of France in second and America's Loui Vito in third place. Iouri's run was technical, clean and big on style on amplitude but the stand out for the night was definitely Loui Vito's run. Although it only took third place he opened with three doubles back-to-back. Spinning on two axis at once with two full flips he made history by being the first person to ever open a run with three back to back tricks like this. The crowd went wild but the judges didn't seem to be as impressed and only gave him the bronze.

Once the competition was over it was on to the bars for the closing parties. The locals favourite was the Dalikk Fodder party at the Loop bar in Tignes Le Lac. Old school rockers Jet Black opened up the proceedings and were followed by The Gentlemen's Pistols. The floor was awash with people dancing and crowd surfing and beer was being spilled everywhere as the crowd of dancers grew and grew. It was a great night out.

The town this morning seems to be a lot slower than it was yesterday. There are a number very tired looking people wandering around and the excitement of the last few days has taken it's toll.

The first ever European Winter X-Games was a showcase as to how a competition should be run. A world class course for the slopestyle and a pipe that was built to Olympic standards showed that Tignes is a resort that can host comps of the highest calibre and the whole event was smoothly run, slickly controlled and incredibly entertaining.

The X-Games will return next year and is conformed for the year after that. On the strength of this weeks proceedings it will almost certainly grow too and next year we can expect to see big air and boarder/ski cross added to the billing.

We'll certainly be back and we recommend you are there too.