Friday Night
Izzy Lalive, Friday night's female Rail Jam winner.
Friday night Austin and Izzy won the Rail Jam. By far, the best feature to watch during the rail session was the totem pole. Riders were airing over it, landing on it, doing fastplants. The other features were a downrail and a straight rail with a squared-off end, they were good, but it seemed like the riders were able to be the most creative with the totem pole.
Austin Hironaka took it home with a 360 Miller flip tailgrab transfer.
Saturday
Saturday we got up to the Ride Shakedown in the afternoon, and driving up it was pouring rain. But, like it does in the mountains, a couple more miles up and it was nuking. The qualifiers were going on and riders were having a really hard time. The snow was sticky and slow, fog had moved in making it hard to see the jump and the landing, and the flying snow made the visibility worse.
While the snow forced the quals to slow down, I headed over to the vendor tents to see what was up. Ride had a big tent with a heater (yes!) and a couple of games to play for swag, Evo’s crew was there and had a game and more swag, Contour HD was doing helmet cam demos, and SnoCon was there too.
Hana Beaman, 2009 Ride Shakedown champ, and Izzy Lalive, 2010 Rail Jam winner.
Before the main event started, I got a chance to talk to Hana Beaman and Izzy Lalive. I asked Izzy how it felt to win the night before. She said, “Its my first big win, and it was a real cool surprise to win.” It is only the second year that women have been invited to compete in the Ride Shakedown and I wanted to know what it was like. They said that most of the guys at the event are really cool and supportive of them competing.
There were five women competing in the Ride Shakedown final, four of which were Hana Beaman, Izzy Lalive, Megan Ginter, and Megan Whiteside.
Seventeen men competed, Austin Hironaka was a crowd favorite.
By the time the competition started, the sky had cleared and it had gotten colder so the snow was fast and the visibility was good. Shay of Shayboarder.com was hanging out and it was fun watching the riders throw down big airs. One of the first jumps, someone called a 1260, and after that it seemed like it was game over. Riders started really pushing themselves and there were lots of falls. Once done with the big air, riders played it a little safe in the rail section–not doing anything too technical, but just riding solid.
The format of the competition was a lot like a game of pool, requiring the riders to call out their trick and then hit it. They had to be accurate and there wasn’t any room for faking it. If they called out a 1080, but didn’t get in all of the rotations, they would get a zero for the jump section.
2010 Ride Shakedown Winners
Results:
Women-
Men-
