The day after the Dumont Cup finished, it was time for a busy travel day. This time I was flying out of Portland, Maine enroute to New York. I landed at La Gaurdia around noon, and had to transfer to JFK for my 7:00 pm flight to Barcelona. Since I had sometime to kill, I decided to take a cab into Manhattan and check out the city. This was my first time in New York, so of course I had to do tourists things.

We all arrived in Barcelona a couple days before the contest and had time to kill. So a bunch of us got an apartment in Barcelona for a couple days. For those two days, we tried to site see, hang out on the beach, and do as many activities as possible. Even got to see some old friends from Walla Walla for an evening.

The next day we went back to the airport and caught a shuttle to Andorra. Andorra is a small country nestled right between Spain and France. For this event, we got to go ski at Grandvalira resort, and stay at Piolets Park Hotel and Spa. Easily the best food any of us had gotten at a hotel, with a full on buffet for breakfast and dinner.

Coffee stop with the squad before heading to the airport

For our practice day, we had two hours practice, and a very quick lap on the pommel lift. Such a fun course, and with the combination of perfect weather, it was awesome.

For our qualifier day, we were split into two heats. The top 8 from each heat were taken to the Sweet 16 for head to head competition till the Final four. Then the final four riders would get three runs each. I ended up qualifying 3rd place in heat, placing me at a number 3 seed for the next day.

My first match up was against Denis Renaulter, awesome Austrian shredder. For our first runs, I was able to land mine, and advance to the next round to face Matt Walker.

A great battle, with both of us landing a run. He was up after his 2nd run, and I ended up landing and narrowly beating his score to make the final four.

For my first run, I was able to land a new run on the jumps by adding a switch hit on the last jump. This gave me a score of 85.33 and would keep me in 2nd for the rest of the day. The last two runs I tried to up my jumps more, but fell on the next two runs. Bummed I wasn’t able to step it up anymore, but still hyped to get another podium finish for this season. Big ups to Oystein and Jesper for getting back on the podium as well.

Major thanks to Marc, and the entire Total Fight staff for throwing a great event, and hooking it up for everyone! Next up is AFP Tour Finals in Whistler for WSI.

-Noah

Photo.

Total Fight - Andorra