Sport-heute: Sailing - Red Bull Project X: Showtime in Silverton

17. Februar 2010, 18:40

Red Bull Project X: Showtime in Silverton - SHAUNE WHITE

SHAUNE WHITE DER GROSSE FAVORIT FÜR OLYMPIA GOLD!

Eigentlich kann ihn niemand schlagen. Er fängt mit den Sprüngen da an, wo die Meisten aufhören. Sein Sprünge in der Halpipe sind so spektakulär, das Andere das Grauen bekommen. Shaune White ist schlicht das Beste was Snowboard je gesehen hat. Schauen Sie die atemberaubenden Bilder an.******
There are very few places yet to be discovered, but still the dream most people hold dear is to explore, search and live. When it comes to snowboarders, it is what powers their lives – that need to ride, create and push the limits is often indescribable, but it is ever-present. It is the need to feel the rush – be it from landing a new trick, finding an untouched line, or pushing boundaries no one else has breached – just one more time. (c)Adam Moran/Red Bull Photofiles Location: Silverton, CO, USA

26.1.2010 Brüttisellen (mk) They strive to do this in spite of the knowledge that most of what is out there has already been discovered. That the road less traveled has still been pre-worn by at least a few souls. Yet they push on, driven by a personal need to journey forward and discover for themselves where their limits truly lie.

This is the story of a winter spent in a place that exists on that loneliest of roads; of a personal journey taken by arguably the best snowboard halfpipe rider in the world to discover just what he’s capable of. And although there are a few people who may have known about it, heard about it or dreamt about it, there was only one person who lived it. This is the story of Shaun White and Red Bull Project X.

Even though the year is 2009, Silverton, Colorado, does a fair job of convincing visitors that they could very well be experiencing the early 1900s. With a population that hovers in only the 500s for year-round residents, Silverton sits at over 9,000 feet of elevation, which is quickly discerned when climbing the stairs of the hotel – in which the Red Bull Project X crew happen to be the only guests. It’s a cowboy town, with dirt streets and simple shops echoing back to when it was once a flourishing mining town. Don’t get the wrong idea, however; it’s certainly no ghost town, although Silverton definitely has its fair share of ghosts.
Located in the heart of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, Silverton made its name as a bootstrap mining outpost. A place where men came not to live, but to survive. It is here that Shaun White chose to step out of his routine and into the unknown. Like the generations who came before him to this tiny town, he looked to the mountains for a source of creativity, inspiration and purification to push him to new heights.

The goal was to give Shaun a canvas on which to paint the tricks that have been living inside his mind, to allow the sport of snowboarding to take the leaps and bounds that it desperately needed. So, on a secluded piece of mountainous land at Silverton Mountain, Red Bull created a snowboarding paradise. A place where the commute was a six-mile snowmobile ride, and punching the clock meant dropping into a perfectly groomed, 22-foot-tall, 550-foot-long Superpipe with the world’s first-ever on-mountain foam pit attached, followed by a few pristine powder turns on the way back to town. This was Red Bull Project X.

The brainchild of Shaun’s long nights on the road and years of spinning, flipping, competing and evolving, Red Bull Project X would create a place where he could finally take the tricks whirling through his dreams from concept to reality. He wanted to progress the sport, and in order to do that, he needed to change his routine. Shaun wanted not only to ride and to progress in the world’s best halfpipe, but to do it under complete secrecy with a backdrop that was literally unbelievable.

How secret was it? After a mystifying photo of the halfpipe, shot from across the mountain valley, appeared on the Internet, rumors began to fly. Most people were convinced it was a re-touched hoax, however; it simply didn’t seem possible.

Project X was perched on a remote section of Silverton Mountain, eight miles outside of town. Not your average resort, Silverton Mountain is a single-lift operation, with no such thing as a cut trail. The only constants are the snowstorms and the avalanche danger. As the highest ski area in North America, it tops out at 13,487 feet. In other words, the perfect place for Red Bull Project X.

The zone where the halfpipe was built featured a natural 18-degree pitch (the perfect pitch for a 22-foot pipe), and it was located at the convergence of eight different avalanche chutes. In fact, avalanche debris would serve as the building blocks for this halfpipe – there was no snowmaking here. All of the snow used for the pipe first settled over 1,000 feet above in the mountain peaks; Silverton Mountain’s avalanche control brought it down to form the base for the pipe build. It was the type of set-up that would either make Project X famous or infamous.

As it turned out, there was actually one day when everyone involved thought it would be the latter. As the Snow Park Technologies (SPT) crew put the final touches on the pipe for the first week of shooting in early February, unexpected weather quickly moved in. A blizzard swiftly enveloped the mountain and released its most vicious and glorious of tidings: foot upon foot of snow. By the morning before the shoot was to begin, the storm had vanished and the crisp, cold, Colorado bluebird sky was there to stay.

Frank Wells, lead cutter from SPT, was the first to go in and survey the snowfall. He and Aaron Brill, the owner of Silverton Mountain, decided that some avalanche control work was necessary before anyone could even get close to the pipe. As Brill began tossing dynamite bombs from a helicopter to test the snow pack, the rest of the crew was staged six miles out on snowmobiles at the trailhead, waiting for word. The helicopter circled back after a few charges had been dropped, and upon landing, Brill jumped out and ran over to the anxious crew.

“The good news is,” he said, “you guys are clear to go in. The bad news is that there was so much snow hanging in the chutes that it ripped out and buried most of the pipe. You better get in there and check it out.”

Upon arrival, the builders were greeted with a 22-foot superpipe filled with about 15 feet of avalanche debris (keep in mind they had just completed a full week of 12-14 hour days building the pipe). There was an eerie calm within the entire crew. Was this an omen, a warning sign or simply a by-product of natural conditions? It had been a Class 3 avalanche (the classification scale only goes to 5!), ripping all the way to the basin floor. This taught everyone to respect the power that Mother Nature holds over everything.

But, like the spirit of the town itself, the team would not be deterred. Working for 24 straight hours, SPT was able to clear the avalanche debris out of the pipe and have it ready for the next day’s shoot. It would prove to be arguably the most progressive session in snowboarding history.

Shaun arrived the day after the avalanche. The 22-foot pipe stood majestically against the rugged, mountainous backdrop of the San Juans and the foam pit was perched perfectly along one wall at its base. “It looked like a field of flowers with a tank in the middle of it,” Shaun said. “It just didn’t belong.” His vision had become a reality. “It’s beyond perfect,” he added. All of the elements were in place, it was now up to him to use them.

The presence of this first-ever on-mountain foam pit allowed for something totally new and unique. It gave Shaun the ability to make mistakes. To try and to fail. To get back up again and keep going without the risk – and setback – of injury. It was the defining part of the project as it put Shaun into a new mind state. He crossed a mental boundary and was able to unlock the details of a trick very few snowboarders have truly understood: the double cork.

Although double flips have been done before, they have never been done in a way that embodied the evolution of the halfpipe discipline. It was here at Red Bull Project X that the missing pieces of the puzzle were put together. After adjusting to the nuances of sailing into the foam, Shaun immediately set to the task of learning the first trick on his wish list: the frontside double cork 1080.

It was a moment of ecstasy when Shaun began to decipher the rotations and motions of what has come to be seen as the next step in the progression of snowboarding. The combination of the flawless pipe, the pristine location, the natural skill and drive that Shaun possesses, and the forgiving nature of the foam pit produced an evolution more rapid than anyone had imagined.

“I can’t describe it,” Shaun said at the close of his first day in Silverton. “It’s unreal. We probably got a couple of years of riding into one day.” In fact he had, in the course of a single day, plucked a trick from the fantasies of countless riders and put it firmly in his contest roster. Red Bull Project X had immediately paid dividends, and there was much more to come.

Shaun settled into a routine of selecting a new trick and working out the execution of body twists and momentum tweaks into the foam before attempting it on the pipe wall. A tape was stretched across the foam pit to simulate the lip of the pipe, and it was never long before Shaun was sticking what appeared to be perfect landings. Still, taking it from foam to snow took a lot of guts, and it was not without incident.

“There’s never a circumstance where there’s no consequence,” Shaun pointed out. Although his progression was markedly more swift than ever before, he still took heavy hits in the pipe, even one that resulted in a bone chip in his left ankle. A supremely driven athlete, Shaun continued to push on; he wasn’t about to walk away from the most productive sessions of his life.

The switch backside 900 was checked off next, followed by the double backside rodeo, a formidable move where the rider floats backward down the pipe, flipping under twice. Although troublesome (Shaun says the first throw was “terrifying”), it eventually succumbed to Shaun and, not surprisingly, took its place in his bag of tricks.

After a break, Shaun’s next session in Silverton produced the Cab double cork 1080 and the double McTwist. The tricks were stacking up, but doing well in contests requires consistency – full runs with difficult combos strung together rather than a mediocre pass down the pipe with a banger at the bottom. Here again, the advantage of a private halfpipe paid off. Stringing a frontside 720 to Cab double cork 1080 to frontside double cork 1080 to Cab 1080, Shaun slid into the base of the pipe to cheers from the crew; he’d learned the tricks and he’d been able to assemble a dream run, as well.

“It’s beyond what I thought it would be,” Shaun said of the experience. “I’m excited to be able to put new runs together.”

New runs were, in fact, Shaun’s main motivation. Halfpipe snowboarding had hit a plateau; the progression of tricks had stagnated, and the world’s top snowboarders knew that progress was a necessity, not an option. Until the ‘09/’10 season, contest runs had become predictable. In the four years since back-to-back 1080’s clinched gold for Shaun in Torino, halfpipe riding had not taken any giant leaps. Conditions were prime for an explosion of creativity. Shaun’s mind was ready to see just how far he could push himself and where he could take his riding, and Red Bull had just provided the resources to make it happen.

What took place on Silverton Mountain was more than just an accumulation of new tricks. It was a chance to watch an artist work. It was a rare opportunity to witness history in the making, to see a truly talented person excel at what they do best. In contrast to the media and contest mayhem that is Shaun’s normal season, it was a throwback to the days when all that really mattered was riding. Many have said that learning a 180 is just as gratifying as learning a 1080, and that the simple act of progression is the real reason snowboarders are all winter addicts, whether it’s in a pipe, on jumps or in powder. Personal progression is the one feeling that everyone can relate to. And Red Bull Project X brought it to Shaun in spades.

By early April, the snow had begun to melt; the season had passed. Red Bull Project X had been an undeniable success, and it was time for the mountain to reclaim its surroundings. In a matter of hours, what was once quite possibly the greatest halfpipe on the planet was reduced to a flat snow basin at the bottom of eight different avalanche paths. Not a trace remained of what had once been so mighty and so majestic. It was now just snow.

Now Shaun, staring down the competitive season ahead, is prepared to strap in for the contest rides of his life. The world will watch and critique, question and report, and the cameras will be on from here until infinity for him. As the mayhem builds, a look back to this time and this place will serve as a respite for Shaun. This place where, for two months in the dead of winter, arguably the best halfpipe snowboarder in the world set out on a personal journey, and found that the road less traveled may just have led him to the next level of his career.

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Red Bull Project X: Showtime in Silverton - SHAUNE WHITE

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