Monday Mix - July 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019·Snowboard AlpineIt's the glamour edition of the Monday Mix this week, with a heady cocktail of red (and orange) carpet action, award winnings, fashion magazine covers shot by by rockstar, canons blasting green slime at anyone unlucky enough to stand in the way...
And there was some good snowboarding stuff, which we'll also get to. Without further ado...
Chloe Kim (USA) cleans up at awards season
19-year-old Chloe Kim took home some heavy hardwear on back-to-back nights last week in California, first at the ESPY awards where she took home the title of Best Female Action Sports Athlete for the second year in a row. After that it was over to the slightly wilder Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Sports Awards, where Kim was named the Favourite Action Sports Star, bar none, making for a decent couple of days for the reigning Olympic gold medallist and world champion.
US Ski & Snowboard summed up Chloe Kim's season best with their latest story on halfpipe's most-dominant woman:
"The current Olympic and FIS World Champion Chloe Kim (Torrance, Calif.) topped the podium at five out of six events she entered, winning at a rate of 83%. In doing so she completed over a full year of victories by winning every major competition she entered from the 2018 X Games to the 2019 FIS World Championships. If her prowess in the halfpipe wasn’t impressive enough, the motivated 18-year-old phenom plans to take on a new challenge this fall by starting her college academic career at the prestigious Princeton University."
Feels like we say this a lot but, once again, congrats Chloe!
Shaun White (USA) gets slimed
Sticking with the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Sports Awards, Chloe Kim's PyeongChang 2018 gold medal-winning counterpart on the men's side, Shaun White, was also in attendance at the show, and while he didn't win any awards, he did give us a behind-the-scenes look at his day before and during the extravaganza, with the whole crazy day culminating in a healthy sliming...
Ester Ledecka (CZE) on the cover of Czech Vogue
STILL sticking with PyeongChang 2018 gold medallists, but taking it back to content a little more refined, Czech alpine snowboard AND alpine ski star Ester Ledecka traded goggles and gate-bashing for glitz and glamour this month, scoring the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia for their one-year anniversary issue.
If that wasn't cool enough, the cover was shot by Canadian rock-star-turned-London-based-fashion-photog Bryan Adams. If you're too young to know who Bryan Adams is, search "Summer of '69" and you'll probably be like, "oh yeah, that guy."
Ledecka celebrated by taking a nice cruise on a hydrofoil...
Billy Morgan (GBR) spends the week upsidedown
Even MORE Olympic medallist content for you now, with some fresh footage of PyeongChang 2018 big air bronze medallist Billy Morgan emerging last week from the Redbull Project Pro dryslope session in Bearsden. How do you think this one ranks alongside his Olympic medal-winning performance, or his groundbreaking, first-ever quad cork 1800 stomp?
Morgan was kind enough to release video of his training regimine for his latest feat, which you can find below. Take notes, kids!
Eric Beauchemin (USA) shreds
Ok, time for a little actual snowboarding...Eric "Mister Vacay" Beauchemin claimed that he made this video a couple years ago, when he casually dropped it on his Instagram page last week, but man, there are some hammers in there that would have a good portion of the world's top riders scratching their heads if you asked them to try the trick in the middle of next season. That cab 540 50-50 revert three shots in is something else...
Italian stars shred Stelvio
Would love to see some footage of these two riding together, but for now we'll just have to imagine the exploits of two of Italy's very finest getting together for some laps, as reigning SBX queen Michela Moioli and alpine SB living legend Roland Fischnaller were snapped together up high in Stelvio last week. With Moioli the reigning Olympic champion and four-time world championships medallist, and Fischnaller the 2015 world champion and five-time world champs medallist, this is a whole lot of excellent snowboarder to squeeze into one photo...
Speaking of Stelvio, it's been snowing there for the past two days straight...
Successful inspection takes place at Sierra Nevada (ESP)
Next season the SBX World Cup returns to Spain's Sierra Nevada resort for the first time since 2013, and this week FIS officials were on hand at the resort for the summer inspection. With a new line in the works for this season that will have the race finish closer to the resort village, and with the highly-experienced Sierra Nevada organizers back in the mix for some World Cup action, we're excited to see what is to come this season at Europe's southern-most resort. Read more HERE.
US SBX team invades Whistler
And, finally, we'll wrap things up this week in Whistler (CAN), where some members the US snowboard cross squad stormed the famed Canadian resort for a week of ziplining, mountain biking, and general adreneline fix-chasing. No word on whether or not they actually hit the snow up on the Whistler Glacier, though we can confirm some suitable SBX crosstraining went down on the mountain bike trails...
Thanks for reading! Enjoy the sun, and dream of snow!