COPPER MOUNTAIN, CO – After a solid week of blowing snow and super-cold temperatures, the sun broke clear just in time and jackets came off for the first ever Hometown Heroes Pro/Am Team Snowboarding event in front of thousands of shredheads at Copper Mountain with Dingo on the mic calling the tricks. A flat box into tranny, a long, mellow kinked rail, and a 40-foot down rail were all torn to pieces by the impressive field of pros and ams.
Hometown Heroes of Snowboarding SUPERPOST
Things started off with a 30-minute am-only session from which the top 6 were chosen to advance to the final, in which they’d each be paired up with 1 of the top 6 pros. It was an intense battle with tricks stomped left and right, but in the end it was Chris Grenier, Louif Paradis, Nick Dirks, Chad Tarbell, Madison Ellsworth, and Scott Stevens who got the green light to move on to the team-format finals.
After a quick course cleanup, the pro-only session got rolling and the intensity of tricks was insane. Every way 270s, switch craziness and killer combos were stock for these guys. After thirty minutes, Lucas Magoon, Mike Casanova, Colin Langlois, Sammy Luebke, Yan Dofin, Lane Knaack were named the final 6 and moved on to the next round.
The top 6 pros drew names out of a hat and each was paired with one of the ams. Things were getting crazy when Magoon was first to draw and picked Chris Grenier. Needless to say, the others were sweating at this point. The finals went on with some even crazier action and ended with the judges (Nic Drago, Todd Franzen, and Doran Laybourn) saying they had scored the pro division as a tie between Mike Casanova and Lucas Magoon. Rather than splitting top dollars, Magoon and Casanova went into a 3-try “rail off”. Two tries later, neither rider had landed the next to impossible tricks they were throwing at the kink rail, and suspense was in the air. On his 3rd and final attempt, Gooner pulled a back 1 switch nosepress, 270 off the kink to boardslide 270 out, and needless to say, walked away 10 G’s richer. Moments after a ten thousand dollar payday, he got 1500 more as he and Chris Grenier were awarded top team honors.
The inaugural HH Snow event, sponsored by Lost Energy Drink and Copper Mountain Resort, went off without a hitch and made history as the first ever team format Pro/Am event. See you at Copper next year, and be sure to check out all the photos and video on www.HHsnow.com.