SFR Tour: La Clusaz

or the second year in a row, I had the privilege competing in the SFR Tour finals in La Clusaz, France. With a long day of travel following the Grand Prix, we arrived in Geneva early on the first of March. After a mellow shuttle ride, we arrived in La Clusaz. Following check in at our hotel although we were exhausted, we decided to take a few laps to check out the course.

Trying to ski jet lagged with no sleep, is rarely ever a good idea. Feeling like a zombie making my way through the slope course, while lacking any kind of motivation to do any tricks. After the rainy/zombie practice was over, we were able to finally sit back and relax in the race office, to hop on the wifi. A couple of us started to get in a discussion about skiing. About halfway through the talk, I made my way over to the couch, and passed out for a half-hour, It was awesome.

Following the meeting about the next few days, we were able to head back up to our hotel. The walk up to the hotel was easily the best workout I’d get that entire week. After walking up that hill with skis, you’re legs would be burning. Better than nothing if you’re not able to go to a gym I guess.

Robby with a Cork 3 hand drag after practice

The next day we had pretty overcast conditions, but thankfully with all day to hit the course, runs started to shape up nicely. Later that evening, we found out that bad weather was going to roll in on the day finals were supposed to happen. Since that was the case, they decided to push up finals to the same day as qualifiers.

Mark Nowakiwsky on the down rail in practice

Thank God they decided to push up finals. The next day, we were greeted by blue sky and sunshine all day long. For the format they took top 5 from the two heats, with the next 2 top scores moving up to finals. After my first run, I was sitting in the top 5 and thankfully was able to stay in and move on to finals. With every competition it’s always awesome to make finals, but after missing out in the last few it was that much sweeter to get back in there.

When it was all said and done, I ended up finishing 6th place, which is the highest I’ve placed in a platinum event so far. So many big runs were stomped by everyone, with the sun out all day long for us.