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Pete from Salomon setting up some skis for us to play on!
Every year we are lucky enough to have a Salomon Ski Demo Day. The ski teams from each store travel to the closest indoor fridge to test out the current seasons products. Salomon always wake us up with some coffee after our long drives and then send us out onto the snow to get us amped. We spend two hours testing all the skis and some boots and then Pete from Salomon gathers us in - usually having to actually take the skis from us - for the afternoon tech sesh. We go through everything about the boots, bindings and the skis. Its always a fun day out and we give big thanks to
Dave and Maggie from our Peterborough store
Pete and Eric from Salomon for taking the time to train us up! I had a great day, I got to test out all the mens and ladies skis – I was loving the Twenty Twelves’s!!
(Words & pics from 2S Team Rider Lex Balladon)
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The UK media have given basejumping a lot of coverage lately. Channel 4 ran a show called ‘The men who jump off buildings’, following Dan Witchalls around the world and documenting his love for throwing himself off… well pretty much anything!
A few months before they also broadcast ‘The Bird Man’, an in-depth look into Jeb Corliss and base jumping’s lunatic cousin; wingsuit proximity flying. If you’ve never seen a wingsuit, imagine dressing yourself up as a flying squirrel and you’ll be almost there. The suits make use of incredibly strong synthetic fibres to form a wing from the forearm to the rear of the knee, and by joining the legs together. The result is increased lift, meaning that instead of dropping like a stone from the sky, you can in a similar way to bird. Well, that’s the theory at least.
Check out Jeb’s latest video below; there’s a few great crap in your pants moments!
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Billabong Pro Andy Irons wins Billabong Pro Tahiti 2010!
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Andy Irons celebrates his Billabong Pro Tahiti 2010 win
Andy Irons has secured his 20th top class career win after coming first in the Billabong Pro Tahiti 2010 at Teahupoo. Hawaiian Irons, 32, who had not won a major competition for over three years, took the title on Friday 3rd September when he defeated CJ Hobgood (USA), 31, in three to four foot waves.
The thirty-two year old is no stranger to winning. His past achievements include the ASP World Tour in 2001 and his last major competition win was the Rip Curl Pro Search in Chile in 2007. Emotional Irons dedicated the win to his wife Lindy and it seems that he has got the taste for winning again, “I really, really like competing because I love to win and I feel on top of the world today. I surf because I love to win. I love this feeling.” Irons gets a huge boost in the right direction in the rankings after this emphatic win, climbing from No. 18 and landing well in the top ten at No. 7.
Billabong sponsored surfer Irons beat Kelly Slater, 38, in the Semis after losing out to him in the opening round of the competition. Slater later finished equal third with young Frenchman Jeremy Flores, 22, who will no doubt be looking forward to the European stage of the competition. The past nine times ASP World Champion got the one and only ‘Perfect 10’ of the competition in the Quarterfinals with an incredible freefall layback barrel. Following his disappointing form at J-Bay, Slater was pleased he turned out at Teahupoo, especially since he moved up a place from 3rd to 2nd in the ASP World Title race rankings. It’s close at the top too with Slater just two hundred and fifty points behind twenty-two year old Jordy Smith (ZAF). Could he possibly get that record tenth World Championship Title?
Irons (HAW), 32, on his way to securing a 20th career victory
The competition got off to a slow start with a weeks worth of waiting days and conditions continued to be hit and miss throughout. Slater says, “The waves haven’t been good, but we’ve seen a lot of cool things. We’ve seen the young guys really step up and we’ve seen Andy (Irons) come back and put one together.”
The next tantalizing stop on the tour is in Southern California, at the Lower Trestles where the action starts from 12th September.
Billabong · Competition · surf · Surfing
A big talking point at Billabong this month is the Billabong Design for humanity event. In its fourth year design for humanity is Billabongs charitable initiative giving the Surf clothing industry a chance to give back to non profitable organisations close to their hearts, as well as celebrating amazingly designed clothing with models and live music.
This year Billabong collaborated with a Californian local to design a swimsuit to cater for those Bohemian rockers everywhere as well as designing one off bikinis, to add to there already vast selection of Billabong bikinis in this years range. This years even supporting the Invisible children foundation saw 4,000 people in attendance to enjoy the live music and the fabulous designs coming down the catwalk in Billabongs runway event.
The girls have been surfing non stop again this month with Billabong’s Felicity Palamteer entering WA open state round at Rottenest, . She was picked to surf in the pro junior boy’s heat. At first she was nervous but quickly realised it would help improve her surfing not just the skill aspect but also the mental side. She ended up finishing fourth in the competition saying “I felt sorry for the guys that I beat and they were probably really annoyed at me for entering. By the end they were all right and tried to laugh it off that they got beaten by a girl haha.” Another point to the girls, and another reason to don our Billabong board shorts and hit the waves this summer.
The boys have also been busy, here is Billabongs Hilton Dawe on his last trip to the Mentawais with Rasta and Donavon. Does it make you feel like turning off your computer to go for surf?
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uk skate history from Blueprint’s 1998 video ‘Anthems’
Rob Selley up milton keynes showing you a whole array of flips and grinds mostly filmed at mk with the occasionly spot else where. a good mix of switch and regular skating technical mastery to keep you entertained. i need not say anymore , just watch it!
blueprint 1998 – Selley's part
If you’ve ever caught a glimpse of Blank Paper Studios’ “The Gap Session” (sister dvd to the much-touted 91wordsforsnow), you might have noticed German powerhouse David Benedek throw down the world’s first double cork. That trick hung with me for quite a while; I remember thinking that David was pushing the limit of just how many spins you could squeeze out of a kicker. Sometimes it’s good to be wrong – Check out the footage above of Norwegian Torstein Horgmo dialling the first (as far as we know) landed triple cork.
For a long time snowboarding has had it’s internal conflicts on style vs technical ability; there are those who say bigger airs encourage the groms to go all out and increase the chances of injury. There are also those who see snowboarding as something there to be pushed to it’s limit. Feel free to comment, we’d love to hear your views!
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Elements new video featuring the Element Europe team, Jo Lorenz ,Madars Apse ,Janne Saario, Guillaume Mocquin, Pirkka Pollari, Jarne Verbruggen as well as Bas Janssen, Ruben Rodrigues, Michael Mackrodt, Alex Amor, Phil Zwijsen, Ross McGouran and last but not least Nassim Guammaz the video shall be premiering on july the 9th at elementeurope.com
The trailer looks promising, haven’t seen much footage from a lot of the European team so be good to see what the lads over at element have been up to. And it makes a change from the U.S pro videos anyway. I’m interested to see what Ross Mcgouran sections like as well. Also hopefully they’ll be a lot of European new and unknown spots that the elements lads will have filmed at for the making of this video.
Element Skateboards Europe – Get Busy Living Trailer HD from Elementeurope
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It’s official Spring 2010 has begun
No comments · Posted by Iain in Billabong, Brands, Uncategorized
At last the days have started getting longer, and last Saturday it was officially the start of Spring in the UK. The clocks go forward on Sunday the 28th of March at Midnight meaning we get even longer days. So it’s time to get rid of the winter coats and grey hoodies and get a new wardrobe for this spring. Here are a few tasters for you…
For the guys
For the girls
