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Not How they Dreamt it
Feb 16, 2010 / 10:03:23 PM
Alex Chumpy Pullin flying through qualification. Image - Dan Himbrechts
words - Russell Holt
Australia's Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin lay face down in the snow, body completely flat and lifeless. You could nearly hear what was going through his mind, you could feel the disappointment through the TV screens. It was one of those Olympic moments, but not the one Chumpy had dreamt about for the last four years and his brain, his body and his heart were digesting the reality of the moment as he lay.
The 2010 Winter Olympic Snowboardcross event is the first of the snowboard events at these Games and the Cypress Mountain venue just outside of Vancouver has been hammered by bad weather and rain and is nearly bare, forcing organisers to give the event courses 'Olympic injections'. Apparently the artificial stimulant laws don't extend past the athletes and to the IOC itself; the course is filed with bales of hay in the burms and iron framed jumps.
Last night the mountain was hammered by wet snow and rain, but today the skies cleared and the average timed one minute and twenty-five second long course was, this morning, hard, icy and marbled- that kind of edge-catching marble snow that makes snowboarding that little bit more unstable and dangerous.
Full of huge burms, multiple step-downs, step-ups, gap jumps and doubles, the course called for high speed with lots of chances to pass, overtake or ride side-by-side. Even with the increased danger and chatter of the rutted snow the 35 athletes were never going to hold back, it was do or die, their Olympic dream was only hours away.
Chumpy celebrates his top seed qualification run. Image - Dan Himbrechts
Qualifying
Alex Pullin was first to run the course and blazed trail with a time of 1:21 minutes that couldn't be beaten by the following 34 riders in the first time trial. Australia's other Snowboardcross legend, Damon Hayler was also setting a scorching pace finishing the first round in 12th.
In the second round Chumpy bettered his time and pushed the pace to 1:20 minutes, creating an unbeatable run. Damon better his qualifying by three and finished in ninth.
The Finals - Chumpy and Damon
The 32 men in the finals are split into eight 4 man heats in which the top qualifiers are faced off against the bottom qualifiers, giving advantage to the fastest qualifiers by seeding them with the slowest. The top two racers go through to the next rounds.
In Alex's first heat he drew reigning Olympic champion Seth Westcott from the USA, who had qualified quite low in the time trials and two other bottom qualifiers.
Alex started out strong and was in the lead, continuing to dominate on the course just like in the time trials. Seth was chasing hard behind Chumpy, through the berms and the jumps he was battling for the lead even though the other two had fallen back. The two approached a section of two doubles, a technical part of the course where riders need to jump in timely rhythm to keep their speed and make each landing.
This is where Chumpy all of a sudden came unstuck, catching an edge when not clearing one of the doubles, he fell skewed off course and slowed to a stop. Seth was gone and the next two racers flew by - his Olympic Bid was over.
Now Chumpy lay in the snow at the finish line.
Damon Hayler was in the next heat up against five time X-Games champion Nate Holland from the USA and came through in second place. Unfortunately he came unstuck in the next round cornering on a burm, going head to head with Holland and Westcott. There was no collision or fowl play that caused Damon to go down, it looked simply like his heel-edge gave way as he tried to ride through a rut in that marble-ice snow.
It was a sad moment for the Aussies, Damon, at 34, is a veteran back to try and better his sevent place in Torino 2006, while Chumpy is the young buck full of potential, both were top medal contenders but that is the cruelty of racing and of Snowboardcross. Laying everything on the line for that one day that one moment is what its all about.
As the day finished and the American Seth Westcott crossed the line to again take the Olympic gold, the two Australians one, maybe retiring and the other just starting will be disappointed they didn't get to the final race but they should be damned proud. We are a nation of small mountains and hardly any snow but they proved that Australian snowboarders are some of the best in the world and that Snowboardcross has a big future in Australia.
tags: olympic, feature, features, photo, photos, snowboard, cross, alex, chumpy, pullin, damon, hayler, seth, westcott, nate, holland, cypress, mountain, weather, snow, fall, transfer
