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XGames Heat against the World's Best
The Short of the Long:
18,000 Miles traveled, a half-million dollar protest (drinks not included), X Games injuries, The Green Jacket (National Champ), a World Cup Silver, three cheap pairs of sunglasses and the A Team.
The past three weeks have been insane. I'm going to fill everyone in quickly, but if you want some longer reading material check out teamcheever.net.
X Games. As usual X Games is the premiere event of the year, The X course was a gliding, transition matching beast with a monster jump that would end a few riders seasons. Euros complain the course isn't technical enough because they aren't absorbing the hell out of everything and still landing flat. Reality is, the X Course calls for extremely technical riding. Matching tranny, gliding perfectly and knowing how to air is as technical as it gets. Over shooting a jump here won't cause you to knee yourself in the face like a typical FIS race, it will just leave you in the back of the 6 rider pack. Final results were Pierre Vaultierre FRA 6, Cheever USA 5, Seth Wescott USA 4, Nate Holland USA 3 (first time not winning in six seasons), Kevin Hill CAN 2, Nick Baumgartner USA 1.
Tech tip for this race. Hopefully if you made it to the X Games you have a serviceman. On glidey courses wax and structure is extremely important. Do your homework. Get snow temps all around the course, test additives and do the leg work. Don't expect to win without prepping your board days or weeks ahead of the first practice day. Build up a wax layer close to the race day conditions and brush that base out with a bronze brush to make it shine like showcar.
Yongpyong World Cup:
If you are sliding on a metal shovel, wax isn't necessary, for a plastic one I suggest using irox spray on hot wax then wiping it off with the nearest rag of Halti kacket that says FIS on it. To read about the half million dollar protest go to teamcheever.net/blog.html.
Grand Prix:
The US Grand Prix was a high speed event that suited riders with the perfect mixture of talent, balls and stupidity. The talent came in because a rider needed to be quick on their feet. Matching small transitions into high speed banked turns was the krux of this course. One wrong move in those areas would result in a wreck. The balls came into play because a rider needed to not be afraid of blowing up. Collisions and wrecks happened every single heat. We all knew that the course would claim it's victims; so man up or shutup. Stupidity... well maybe Seth was smart in pulling out of the race (what was I saying about balls?) Reality has it, maybe it took someone a little stupid to point it full speed into an area barely meant for one rider four wide. Either way results were Tony Ramoin FRA 4, Markus Schairer AUT 3, Cheever (National Champ) 2 and Kevin Hill CAN 1
Tech Tip: Invest in your equipment. Don't be stubborn and refuse to buy gear because you think you should get it for free. Maybe you should, but have race and trainer boards (skis if you do that) that are exactly the same shape and close to the same speed. An obvious reason is a backup in case something breaks. Another under rated reason, especially at the Nor-Am level is the feel for gear. I'm not going to train on system3 red when my race call is HF Blue. I won't be used to the course and that is going to put me at a disadvantage to smarter, more prepared competitors.
Vive Le Habitants:
Qubec City is awesome. I drive six hours north of Boston and its like I'm in Europe. French food, French language and French Canadians. Just remember, the French comes before Canadian. Stoneham has been hosting a solid World Cup for the past few years and will also host the 2013 FIS World Championships. Stoneham isn't really a hill to write home about, and they usually have a decent course. This year, was a little different. After the debauchal in South Korea, National Teams were waiting for FIS to redeem itself. They fell a little short with a slow-motion kiddy cross that wasn't getting any help from the -18 snow temp. Luckily warmer temps were called for race day and officials changed the course in order to make it exciting (exciting enough). I applaude FIS for a step in the right direction to make the changes. Results were double Gold for the USA with Baumgartner and Jacobellis taking that. I got my second silver of the week and a coveted spot on US Snowboarding's A Team to go with it. Bronze on the men's side went to David Speiser of Germany with Kevin Hill of CAN rouding up big finals. The ladies saw Dom Maltais CAN getting Silver Deborah Anthonoiz of FRA Bronze and rookie Jackie Hernandez of USA with the last spot in big final.
Tech Tip:
If you are going east of the rockies, prepare for anything. Qubec threw a blizzard, -20 air temps, then +4 air temps all within four days. You don't want to be stuck in upstate New York bummed that the artic cold spell was broken by a day of rain and all you have is a few bars of HF blue and a stick of p tex to fix your base burns.
For more specifics on race day action please go to my website,
Teamcheever.net
Go fast. Take Chances,
Cheever
(Congratulation to Cheever on his 2nd place World Ranking!)
 SBX World Cup Silver Medal - Cheever USA, your Author. How sweet is that?
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