The UK’s Sam Pilgrim was up to his old tricks again at the recent White Style event in Leogang, Austria… winning!
The young Animal team rider blew away an international field at this extraordinary winter slopestyle event and is due to be hitting the slopes once more come March at the Animal Slopestyle Champs at The BRITS 2010, Laax, Switzerland
Event Press Release:
More than 2,000 spectators made their way to the White Style course designed and built by Kona Clump team rider Grant “Chopper” Fielder. Grant received lots of props from the other riders for the set up consisting of different elements like: An igloo at the start with a small drop, a set of two doubles, followed by two massive fruit bowls combinations (with a 15ft drop) as well as a huge double at the finish (about 40ft. far). Riders jumped the last gap and reached up to 25ft. above the ground.
The most important point to remember: the whole course was built out of snow. So it was definitely a challenging set up. But some of the world’s best riders came to Leogang. They impressed the spectators and sometimes each other by pulling off the biggest tricks that were seen in a mountain bike contest.
The qualifications on Friday evening were dominated by Swedish rider Martin Soederstroem (technical and clean riding including double tailwhips), Yannick Granieri from France (by far the biggest backflips performed on a contest), U.S. American Cam McCaul (great style and big bag of tricks), Canadian Darren “The Claw” Berrecloth (360 look downs at its best). Linus Sjoeholm (SWE), Amir Kabbani (GER), Sam Pilgrim (GBR) and Jamie Goldman (USA) completed the Top 8 of the qualifyings.
The man on the day of the finals was Sam Pilgrim, no question: tailwhip at the start, frontflip at the first double, backflip no hander at the second, 360 x-up out of the fruit bowl, tuck nohander and backflip at the 2nd fruit bowl, as well as a backflip table at the last jump. Sam couldn’t stop joking after his success having 1,800 Euros in his pocket: “I will spend all the money on sweets, for real!” But he also stated pretty serious: “Crashing on snow is not that funny, because it’s much harder than you might think. It took me a bit to cope with it when I competed the first time at the White Style, but man, it was fun this year and Chopper did a really great job, big respect!”
Top 12 riders:
1 Sam Pilgrim Diamondback GBR
2 Linus Sjöholm Scott SWE
3 Yannick Granieri Commencal FRA
4 Amir Kabbani Mongoose GER
5 Darren Berrecloth Specialized CAN
6 Cameron McCaul Trek USA
7 Jamie Goldman Santa Cruz USA
8 Sam Reynolds DMR GBR
9 Grant Fielder Kona GBR
10 Niki Leitner YT Industries AUT
11 Martin Söderström NS Bikes SWE
12 Jakub Vencl AGang CZE
