Trond Hansen from Norway won the contest by showing the crowd a trick loaded run with lots of style. Other competitors also surprised the spectators with amazing riding performance. Twenty-two riders from eight countries rode the course built by Grant Fielder.
Beginning with two large doubles and followed by a huge berm and a satellite dish, the challenging course continued into a step-up/step-down box providing a 12ft. drop/road gap launching the riders over a Nissan truck. After this obstacle the last double marked the end of the course with lots of airtime for a good spectacle.
Two qualifying runs on Saturday afternoon were dominated by Grant Fielder, Martin S�derstr�m and Benny Korthaus. Grant came up with nice clean lines, including an x-up-one-footed backflip, a superman-seatgrap, a no-footed can-can out of satellite dish and a stylish tailwhip at the last big air. The young Swedish rookie Martin S�derstr�m impressed judges with a 360-tailwhip, a 360-barspin, a lookdown at the satellite dish and a barspin up the step-up and an overall very clean and technical run.
Benny Korthaus rocked the course and the spectators went nuts when they saw the height of his jumps. He pulled a 360-table top and a backflip at the first two doubles followed by a big 360 from the huge step down box and a backflip tabletop at the last obstacle. With this amazing run Benny qualified first for the finals and surely was the man to watch for the finals� win. Andreu Lacondeguy couldn�t control his Spanish blood and tried a double backflip at the final jump. The Kona Clump team rider over rotated the double flip and landed on his back, knocking him out for a few seconds, and out of contention.
The judges already knew after qualifying that the level among the top 12 riders was very high and predicting the podium would be difficult.
Benny Korthaus had bad luck in his two final runs. He crashed in both, once attempting a 360-drop and in his second run he fell when trying the 360-whip at the big final jump, so he finished 10th at the end of the day.
Andi Wittmann used the first two doubles to do a 360 and a x-up-one-footed backflip, table toped out of the satellite dish, barspinned the step-up, ended his run with a big tailwhip indian air and got third. Amir Kabbani from Munich topped this run by doing a tailwhip and backflip first, pulling a nice no-foot cancan out of the satellite dish, barspinned the step-up, x-uped the step-down and finished his run with a perfect superman seatgrab. There was only one rider who could top these two runs: Trond Hansen. Next to a 360-table top, a backflip right after the start and a clean table top one-foot at the satellite dish, a barspin onto the step-up he landed one of the highest jumps in the contest a perfect frontflip at the last double.
Trond, with his 2,000 � check in hand, said: �It was a great day for me. Riding the snow wasn�t that difficult, I got good grip and enjoyed every minute. Well, dirt is the better choice of course, but I had fun, real fun and now I am really motivated for the upcoming season.�
All the riders and a lot of the spectators were partying until the early morning in the Kralleralm.
Results Nissan White Style presented by Kona:
1st Trond Hansen - Specialized - (NOR)
2nd Amir Kabbani - Cannondale - (GER)
3rd Andi Wittmann - Giant - (GER)
4th Martin S�derstr�m - / - (SWE)
5th Andreu Lacondeguy - Kona - (ESP)
6th Lluis Lacondeguy - Kona - (ESP)
7th Mike Smith - DMR - (UK)
8th Lance McDermott - Scott - (UK)
9th Sam Pilgrim - Diamondback - (UK)
10th Benny Korthaus - Specialized - (GER)
11th Rob J (GER) - Rocky Mountain - (GER)
12th Grant Fielder - Kona - (UK)
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