The French superstar and first TTR world tour champion called in to let us know what he’s been up to all summer since leaving New Zealand, and what tricks he’ll be throwing in Saas-Fee.
“I kept myself busy this past month, after a summer spent shredding down under, I came back home for few days before going to Paris for the French ski federation presentation. Every season, members of the A team are invited with other disciplines “athletes” to meet up with the Parisian media and talk about their plan for the season. Judging by the amount of journalists and solicitations my friend Xavier De Le Rue and I received you could definitely tell it’s an Olympic season.
After couple days running from TV channels to newspapers to radio stations to give interviews, I came back home for few days surfing. Just enough time to recover entirely and I had to fly back to Paris for the X-games Europe press conference and party. Along with Mikkel Bang I was the only snowboarder invited, the party was great and the X-games presentation gave people hopes in the fact it will be the event French market and Europe are awaiting. ESPN and Canal + events sent out the message it will be just as good as the X-Games in Aspen, Snowpark technologies already visited Tignes the hosted resort and only snow is missing so the crew can start working on the best super pipe and slopestyle course France has ever seen.
Apart from Mikkel and me, few names of selected people were revealed, here are few of the other snowboarders already revealed, my buddy Arthur Longo, Torstein Horgmo, Andreas Wiig, Kevin Pearce, Danny Davis, Torah Bright, Cheryl Maas, Gretchen Bleiler. During the party organised by Canal +, I met up with French celebrities such as Richard Dacoury, a friend of mine who used to be the French Michael Jordan before Tony P. era and Fred from the comic duo Omar and Fred.
After a second visit in Paris in less than a month it was time for me to strap in again, breathe some fresh air from the mountain and throw some hammers. With the other riders from the French snowboard team we gathered in les Deux Alpes for a pipe training session with an air bag to add few more tricks in our bags. The main goal was clearly to catch up on double cork manoeuvre. The resorts crew has been working like crazy to make sure we, Arthur Longo, Gary Zebrowski, Olivier Gittler, Johan Baisamy, Alluan Ricciardi and I would benefit from the best riding structure. The snow conditions didn’t allow the resort to provide a full length half pipe, the shapers put their effort in shaping a 20 meters long wall that enabled us to execute tricks and land on the airbag. Although it is way safer than trying on snow right away, landing face first after a double spin is nothing but smooth. Anyway, a few new double cork tricks went down during those 4 days of session and we are now heading to Saas-Fee to ride a full length half pipe and why not try them out on real snow…”
Click Here to watch Crepel’s cab double-cork airbag training.
