September
September
Incredibly sad news emerged in September as problems with Apo’s binding design (as well as having to shell out to keep their new Olympian on the team) meant that cuts had to be made. Deep cuts. So deep in fact that founder of Apocalypse Snowboards and star/creator of the amazing Apocalypse Snow films shot in eighties France – Regis Rolland – was fired. No worries though, as he himself put it: “Retirement at 53 seems a little early.”
Joining the list of the fallen in September was Jussi Ocksanen, retiring from Burton and professional snowboarding to concentrate on his bottle brand Mizu. It hard hard to see him go, but incredible to watch him leave.
Thankfully to cheer us all up, Jamie Nicholls was featured on Sky in his very own documentary: Forged In Steel, celebrating the genius (well, at least on a snowboard) of ‘our lad’ from Yorkshire. It was great stuff, including a top-to-bottom, outside-to-inside-to-outside-agin line through Hemel, a giant Scottish kicker, a return to Halifax and – best of all – the sight of the young athlete almost in tears whilst splitboarding.