An Asian offshoot of the Air & Style series landed in Beijing’s Birds Nest Stadium for the legendary city Big Air Event. The saying goes that everything’s bigger in Texas, but Texans obviously haven’t been to China, the ramp stood at a monstrous 42 meters high for the riders to hurtle themselves down the scaffold towards the kicker.
The rider list for the prestigious Air & Style series is always the who’s who of kicker riding and the Beijing Air & Style never disappoints. With riders like Mikkel Bang, Andreas Wiig, Halldor Helgason and Markku Koski making the journey out east, it’s a showdown between the old guard and the new.
Mr White himself even makes an appearance, not in a riding format, but a sort of guest appearance kind of way. You would have thought that if you put your name to something, you’d get to ride it right? El Blanco aside, it’s the only 6 Star WST competition in Asia, so along with the usual Euro and American contingents, you also get to see what the Orient has to offer as well.
The most recent edition of the Air & Style Beijing was the biggest and the organisers rang the changes to boot. The new format pitted rider against rider from the first run all the way to the finals in some sort of ITV Gladiator-eque knockout. It was the unknown challenger Yuki Kadono who went on the first whistle to knock out veterans Stale Sandbech and Peetu Piiroinen with the first Triple Cork 1440 thrown in a stadium Big Air event.