Skipress - Index

Skipress - TWSSF Special Edition 2008 - Index

UN-COMPETITION
Last year’s Masters winners:
Team Atomic.
It’s freeskiing’s
spring celebration
of choice.
26 THE TWSSF ISSUE 2008
The Festival’s 2007
Stompede at Whistler.
Photos: Courtesy of Orage
Photo: Etienne Bonneau-Marcil
New at the Festival
ORAGE MASTERS:
MOVING ON UP (NORTH)
— BY EVE BOISSONNAULT
After having been nurtured for four years under the warm California sun on
Mammoth Mountain, the Orage Masters are now all grown up and ready
to join the big league at TWSSF. This year’s “jib those twintips” competition
is going to bring young and established talents together in the tried, tested
and twisted Orage Masters format.
Where did the TWSSF Stompede go? What
happened to the competition that turned freeskier
Virginie Fabvre and snowboarder Matt
Dano into champions? Well, it’s gone.
With the relocation of the slope-styled Orage
Masters to the Festival for skiers, organizers
decided to re-allocate resources to ensuring
that prize money was commensurate with the
level of talent that was participating.“The
festival is continually evolving,” said Lisa
Richardson, grand manitou of communication
at the Festival. “We keep our ears to the
ground, and the rumblings we heard from the
athletes were that they wanted more prize
money and bigger parties. So that’s what the
Festival will deliver.”
It shouldn’t have been surprising that the Orage
Masters were taking over the event. Since 2003,
when they gave away snowmobiles and huge
plasma-screen TVs, they’ve been over the top in
the same way the Festival is.
But the most progressive aspect of the event is the
format itself. The Orage Masters competition had
a real Lords of Dogtown feeling to it from the get-go.
It was the fi rst non-competition competition in the
sport. It’s a friendly way to come together and
Orage Masters action
at Mammoth 2007.
show off creative tricks at the end a long winter.
It’s freeskiing’s spring celebration of choice.
So this year the event is movin’ on up to Whistler.
And it’s only fair that it gets to be TWSSF-scaled.
And that’s why the special park course will be
design by Peter (YP) Young, with the help of
superstar TJ Schiller. In its cherished tradition, the
Orage Masters will still give away surf trips to
Costa Rica and snowmobiles to winners — not
to mention the blason de la gloire, a specially
made Orage jacket that the winning team will
show off at the Very VIP after-party.
This year, eight teams have been invited to participate:
Salomon, Rossignol, Forefront, Armada,
Dynastar, Volkl, K2 and Atomic.
“Partnering with Orage to bring the Orage Masters
as part of the Festival was a perfect opportunity to
keep on the cutting edge of the free skiing progression,”
Richardson said. “The Orage Masters is
such a great fi t for the Festival — with it’s anticompetition
team spin, and the em phasis on
collaboration and creativity, we think it caps the
athletes’ season off perfectly and provides a great
and accessible on-hill event for spectators to enjoy.”
Enough said. We’re there.