Shakedown Videos

Check out these videos of the Shakedown!

Also, I found out that my roomate/friend that
rides in my club WVSC/Rafiki Aaron Santos
also has a sweet blog. Check it out here:
http://www.aarondevourseverything.blogspot.com/

We're still waiting for Ali Tracy to start a blog...

Until then, ride fast and take chances!

-A

Un Voyage Magnifique!

It has been a while and a lot has happened since the Olympics. Mainly, I've been gearing up for this crazy trip. To give you a little foreshadowing of what to expect from this post, I competed in 4 of my biggest contests of the year, rode at 3 different resorts, stayed in 4 different places, practiced my french and ate some delicious Quebecois food. Need I say more? Well that pretty much sums it up, I'll now go into further detail but feel free to scroll past that and just check out the photos.

The National Champions are a pretty big deal to me. I've been competing in them since I was 16 years old and I always enjoy seeing how I compare to the rest of the country in freestyle riding. Canada~Snowboard decided to split it into two resorts this year, Halfpipe was at Stoneham while Slopestyle (and all the racing) was at Mont Tremblant.

We arrived to Stoneham and found that the Halfpipe was in pretty awesome shape. It's a 22 foot pipe (the same dimensions as the Olympic pipe), which are really fun to ride in. There are only 2 in Canada now because unfortunately Cypress Mountain has no interest in keeping their amazing Halfpipe going now that the Olympics are over. That's a shame because Canada needs more good pipes to produce good pipe riders - but this post is supposed to be about my trip so I'll try to stay somewhat on topic. Back to Stoneham, right! Our first day of training was awesome. I ended the day by landing the best frontside 7 of my life (so far). My coach, Joe, has video from the trip that I hope to get soon and I want to post some here.

The following day was the last day of practice before the competition and my back was bothering me a bit. I decided to take it mellow and save my back for the competition. I've been dealing with my lower back injury on and off since January. I've been going to lots of physio and chiro appointments leading up to the trip to make sure that I would be good to go. Thankfully, this would be the worst my back would be during the trip.

I felt good on the day of the contest. I was trying the toughest run I've ever tried, starting with a frontside 7. I landed that trick really well on both runs but was not able to put a complete run together. I ended up coming up just short of making the top 12 final, placing 14th. This is the best I've ever done at the Nationals, however I still feel like I need some more training before I will feel like I deserve to be in the finals with the best in Canada. I'm stoked for spring pipe riding where it is a lot easier to learn tricks.

OK this post is getting huge. That was only 1/4 of the trip! We also spent a day in downtown Montreal. Check out the photos below.

Kyle and I, first and second cut for finals, it stings but we learned a lot and had fun

Look how straight and perfect looking the left wall was.

Oh that's where I parked my car!

Cobblestone street in Old Montreal

This art is amazing!

Joe and I in downtown Montreal

After that we were off to the Slopestyle Nationals at Mont Tremblant. I'll try to keep the rest of the post shorter. I was feeling pretty good on the jumps and rails. I had a nice flow in my run and would have made finals if I can landed it clean. Unfortunately though I went too big on my last jump on the first run and then over rotated a 540 in my second run. My buddy Robby came third, he's killing it this year!

To finish of our epic journey, we drove down the road to St. Sauveur for the infamous Ride Shakedown (previously the Empire Shakedown). This is the biggest, most competitive event in Canada. It attracts professionals from across the country and around the world. It was amazing to compete in this contest. They usually have a massive jump and a gnarly street rail setup. Kyle and I held our own, landing 720s on our first run but both of us messed up on the rail. In this contest you have to call your trick beforehand and you cannot repeat the same trick twice so I decided to go for my first frontside 1080. I was close in my practice run but I spun too slowly on my judged run. I competed in the rail jam after that which was so much fun. I'll try to put the video up once I get it because that is way cooler than me trying to explain it.

Yah right! The jump had people skiing under us as we jumped!

This is the scene from the top of the course during the finals. Massive crowd!

Well if that wasn't a post, I don't know what is! Video coming soon.

Thanks for stopping by,

Andy

Olympic Fever!

The past couple weeks have been absolutely unreal. I have always been a huge fan of the Olympics; To be immersed amongst the magic and madness was unbelievable. It was amazing to see so many people proud to be Canadian.

This video is from the Opening Ceremonies at the Village Square when the Canadian athletes walked in. It was an amazing environment and it really got me pumped on being a part of the Olympics. Mike Janyk, a local ski racer that competed in the games, spoke at the ceremonies. He was so stoked to be there representing Canada. Awesome!

No wonder why we won gold, look at our hockey players!

I was so lucky to have the chance to watch the Canada Switzerland game with my family. The arena was nuts!! We couldn't believe that it went into a shootout but it was so much fun to see.

There were free concerts every day during the Olympics in Whistler. This is Matisyahu, he played a great show. Check him out here.

This was the massive crowd that came together for the hockey finals. What a riot! The place went nuts when Crosby scored in Overtime. I'll never forget that day or that game.

I could write a short novel about how amazing the Olympics were but I think I'll try to keep it short and sweet. I was inspired and proud so many times throughout the Games with the performances put forth by the Canadian athletes. Congratulations to all of the athletes. I was so happy to see Jasey Jay Anderson take it home in the giant slalom, Maelle Ricker win the boardercross as well as Mike Robertson take home the silver medal. All of them were riding so well it was fun to watch.

It was incredible that we won so many gold medals too; the Own the Podium funding did pay off after all (the negative talk during the first week). Elite athletes need top funding to support them in order to have a chance at standing on the podium in the Olympics and World Cup events. I read that 80 percent of Canadian Olympic athletes are left in debt after the Games. This goes to show that money isn't everything, these guys are doing it for the love of their sport. Nevertheless, I hope that our country continues to strongly support our athletes in the future so that we can keep the ball rolling with strong sport programs in Canada and give kids something to strive for. Go Canada Go!

See you in Russia!

World Cup Motivation

Cab 540 tail grab, B Ma photo

The last couple of weeks have been pretty intense. I competed in my first ever World Cup in slopestyle followed just after by the Burton Open Global Series stop in Canada where I competed in both halfpipe and slopestyle. The level of riding at these competitions was the highest I've ever competed against. At this stage in my season and career, I'm focusing my efforts on improving my riding and skills, rather than trying to win at contests. I need more practice with bigger, more difficult tricks before I can step up to this level of riding. I feel good about the progress I've made so far this year; I'm excited to get back to Whistler to keep at it and have a great time while pushing myself to new limits.

Gap 270, B Ma photo

These contests served as a huge wake up call for me to really start to giver with my riding. It was pretty humbling not making it to finals in any event over the last couple of weeks but it was also very motivating; I'm now focused on improving as much as I can before my next big competition. It sucks not making finals. That being said, I was happy with my riding in the competitions. I was riding better in my competition runs than I was in practice; Nothing like a little pressure to get the adrenaline pumping! I landed some new tricks and figured out how to improve on some others. I also learned a lot from watching some of the worlds top riders killing it, double corks!

Switch Backside 540, B Ma photo

My brother (B Ma) happened to be in Calgary running a training camp for some Arctic Winter Games hopeful kids from the NWT during the World Cup. I was able to do a few laps with them and reconnect with where I started, pretty similar to them. They were really excited to have a chairlift and some nice jumps to ride. Good luck to those boys and all the NWT riders in the upcoming Games! Brendan took some cool photos of me competing in the World Cup (above). Thanks bro!

My friend and Westbeach team rider Robby Balharry placed third at the Burton Open Slopestyle, beating out sick pros like (Air and Style Winner) Marko Grilic. It's pretty huge for an amateur rider to podium at a prestigious event like the Open. Way to rip Robby!

- A M