The brand new Natives Skier/Boarder X Series kicked off to a great start in Val Thorens this week... Alex Kurkjian reports:
The first Natives Skier/Boarder X was in conjunction with
Wasteland, so there were loads of students from all over the UK, including Oxford Keeble, Nottingham, and LSE, all competing alongside the season workers, some of which had even skied over from neighbouring resorts such as Courchevel for the event!
Students?
As it turned out however, most of the students who had signed up in advance, opted for the lazy option of staying in bed after their night out boozing in Val Thorens - they clearly weren't up to the challenge ahead! The tougher students did manage to make it up Les Deux Lacs chairlift to the Natives gazeebo to sign up and get their bibs on, ready for the individual timed runs down the course around 11am.
The day was shaping up nicely
Thankfully it wasn't heavily snowing, as it has been just now in London now(!) so luckily visibility of the course was OK, and the sun was actually shining upon us, the BBQ was getting fired up, we had some music to wake the students up, as well as Simon's dulcit tones on the mic, getting everyone ready and lined up for their individual runs.
BBQ started & the heat was on!
Once everyone had been timed, there was a break for the fantastic BBQ put on by the friendly Danes from
John's of Val Thorens which offered not only a delicious lunch, but also much needed warmth for our hands - as the temperatures were down to minus 17 degrees so we only just managed to stay warm enough with about 7 layers of clothing, but it was sadly too cold for our video camera to work! Luckily our camera was OK though! All the drinks had completely frozen though which was great if you were after an orange slush puppy!
Knock-out stages began 
After the fab BBQ the real competition began as we progressed onto the more exciting head to head knock-out stages of skier and boarder categories. Four raced down against eachother as in the Winter Olympics, and sure enough, there were a few minor, and not so minor collisions, but luckily everyone was alright. Heroic Rasmus had a particularly nasty wipe-out, but still made it down and ended up coming third of the skiers! Another mention has to go to Lara Crisp, the only female contender in the skiers, who showed the boys how it's really done and came second overall!
Prize-giving
The knock-out stages were very speedy and so it didn't take long to discover who our winners were (which was useful as feet were becoming like ice-blocks by this stage!) and we all skied and boarded over to
Bar 360 for the well-deserved drinks and prize-giving. As it turned out, the beer was a bad move as it was so cold, it kept freezing! So we moved onto the much better option of mulled-wine! Some great tunes were being pumped out by the resident DJ in the fab open air bar and we got going with the dishing out of prizes to the very lucky winners! That included our fancy dress winner "Moo, the Cow" who won himself a bottle of vodka!
A big thank you to all the team who helped make it a great event - Simon, Iain, Paul, Chris and his fab team of Wasteland reps,
Val Thorens Club des Sports for all their help,
Bar 360 and
John's and of course all our very generous sponsors:
Westbeach,
Forcefield,
Ski Club of Great Britain,
Profeet,
Piste of Mind,
RK,
Ride Freesport,
Warren Smith Ski Academy and
British Freeski Camps.
Winners
Well done to everyone for taking part in the first ever Natives Skier/Boarder X event of the 2011 series and especially to all the winners:
Male Skiers:
1st - Peter Bijuklic
2nd - Charlie Palmer
3rd - Rasmus Hansens
Female Skier:
1st - Lara Crisp
Boarders:
1st - Jim Barlow
2nd - Ted Dako
3rd - James Perring
4th - Magnus Assmunasun
Fancy Dress Prize: "Moo"
We look forward to seeing you all at our next Skier/Boarder X in Meribel on 20 January 2011! Make it along to that and the final leg in Tignes on 2 March 2011 as the more of our events you enter, the better your chance of winning one of our amazing series prizes!
