championship » Fotograferen.net

Korea World Champs: Final Images (Half-Pipe & Big Air)

Jan 242009

The Hyundau Sungwoo Resort in Gangwon.

Some final images of the past two days before I leave for Switzerland Tomorrow.
Yesterday’s half-pipe saw some amazing action but the light was horrible for photography. Still managed to pull a few nice shots, especially from the winner Ryoh Aono from Japan.

Ryoh Aono 2x

If yesterday was cold, today was Arctic. With heatpockets in both hands I managed to keep my fingers a bit above freezing temp but the conditions weren’t as nice as they were in the first few days. Guess we saw it all this week: full sun, biggest snowfall in 20 years and freezing windy icechills to end the week with.

Last contest was the Big Air which had horrible angles from all sides so no real great images here too. Perhaps tonight for the finals things will be nice with my slaves and all the lamps they’ve put up at the jump.

David Mol (close-up) and Pim Stigter (action)

That’s it for this amazing Korean week, what a great place for such a contest. I’m off, Laax (Switzerland) is next… see you after the weekend.

Korea World Champs: Half-pipe & Big Air

Events, Snow No Responses »

Jan 222009

Some more shots of todays action: the half-pipe contest which sadly turned out to be a bummer for Dolf van der Wal (missing the finals by 2/10 points on a disputable judging score). Some nice shots even though the waether was a bit bleak.

The nights Big Air practice turned out to be fun again while stressing the camera to the limits, using the high ISO range and two slave flashes. Happy with the results and ready for the contest the day after tomorrow.

Korea World Champs Snowboarding: freestyle coming up!

Events, Snow 1 Response »

Jan 212009

Todays carving action wasn’t too succesfull for Nicolien either but fortunately I was able to do some decent freestyle shooting today. First some shots at the half-pipe (in between parallel slaom heats) and then some difficult shots with slave-flashes at the nightly big-jump practice session.

Tomorrow: half-pipe qualification and perhaps a couple more bigjump shots…

Images from the Giant Parallel Slalom

Events, Snow No Responses »

Jan 202009

Some images from Today’s GPS event. Jetlag got me up early on the mountain, right in time to catch the sun rising above the hills.

Early rise!

Nicolien Sauerbreij memorizing the course.

Nicolien Sauerbreij in action.

The steep course made for some great crashshots!

Amazing lightshow.

A quick back-and-forth to the halfpipe for a shot of David Mol.

Korean Update (Tuesday 20th)

Events, Snow, Travel No Responses »

Jan 192009

Quick note from Korea

Events, Snow, Travel No Responses »

Jan 182009

From South-Korea this week I’ll bring some updates on the 2009 FIS Snowboard World Championships.

Munich take-off

Seoul arrival… hmm!

A bit of a thing: driving 8 hours through heavy fog to Munich to catch a plane to Korea. But, it’s a small price to pay for a dream-assignment like this! So, after an easy but mostly sleepless flight (compensated for by gin-tonics) we arrived at Seoul Airport with a gentle but nagging jetlag of eight hours.

Getting close to the contest.

After a mad and three hour VIP Taxi transfer that took us past the edge of the capital city, traffic jams, heavy snowfall and a highway though the mountains (hills, if you live in the Alps) and the crazy Hyundau Sungwoo Resort in Hoengseon-gun in the Gangwon-do province. How about a mounthfull! As the Koreans were convinced I was an important competitor the drive was fast and furious and ended up with a police escort for the final 5 kilomters, cool!

Bell Berghuis and coach Frank Germann discuss the course.

Some high-grade board preparation.

From the taxi it was straight to the slopes to watch Bell Berghuis compete in the Boardercross qualifications. It’s a pity she fell on her second run because she had a very good chance of competing in the finals. Still, a nice day for me photograph-wise. More updates this week as there are plenty more Dutchies competing.

Practice run on the first rollers.

First quali-heat on the massive corner!

Over and out…

World Championships Bogsnorkling

Events, Extreme, Travel No Responses »

Sep 022008

Snorkling, most people envision wildly colored coral reefs and incredibly beautiful fish swirling around them. Not in Wales, where snorkeling has been taken to new heights or should I say new lows? A 60 meter long and 1,5 meter deep trench dug into a pleasantly sodden field somewhere in the Welsh hills is the competition ground for the one and only World Championships Bogsnorkling.

Bog snorkeling? Yes that’s right: with the aid of fins, masks and snorkels participants do a 120 meter back-and-forth in muddy, very muddy water without using regular swimming strokes. As the underwater viz is about zero the mask mostly functions as a way to keep deep brown water out of your eyes. And hey, it looks great too!

Upon coming to Llanwrtyd Wells [Google Earth], a small town with 700 inhabitants in the middle of Wales, I only had to follow signs “To the bog” or “Bog not very far now!”. Easy as one, two, three but I did end up in the middle of nowhere (though it has a name apperently: the Waen Rhydd Peat bog, Google Earth) but apparently that’s where I had to be. A small two pound fee for the farmer whose field was being plowed in an uncontrolled manor (read: damaged) by many a car was the only exchange of currency for this event. All was free to enjoy and so was the field where it was quite difficult to see the difference between water and the grass as it was completely soaked after this year’s awful summer. Nice, end of August and still up to my ankles in mud.

But who cares? I haven’t had so much fun in quite a while with all these guys jumping in and trying to make it as fast as possible (and it’s rough snorkeling such a length I can tell you from the exhausted look on the snorkelers faces. It’s just one of these things you gotta see!

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Fotograferen.net