Flexifoil Snowkite Rider, Matt Blanchard, reports back on his time at the 2008 Snowkite Masters

A new kind of event took place in the wonderful Bernina spot, organized by Patrick Koller. The competition comprised of three different disciplines – freestyle, race and best-line.

After a night of driving on the Italian highways, drinking latte ‘macchiato’, we got to Bernina Pass very early Saturday morning.

We had a little nap in the van and breakfast at the “lozpizio”. Sadly the wind conditions were too gusty and very strong. A few brave souls did try to go out but understood pretty fast how dangerous the conditions were (and can be).  Thankfully everybody came back safe.

On Sunday morning, the sun was shinning and the whole spot was covered with fantastic fresh powder. Even though it was pretty hard to wake up after such a night, the race meeting took place at 10am. It was decided that the contest would start with the freestyle event. Many of the worlds best snowkiters were there including: Chasta, Sigve, Bjorn, Marreck, Holy, Fabio, Johan, Koller, to name just a few, so the atmosphere was great.

The freestyle started with four rider heats. I decide to ride my new Atom08 9m – this kite is just perfect for the conditions we had whilst the heats were on. The park is great with nice kickers and sliders shaped by Koller and Chasta a few days earlier – thank you guys. I meet Chasta and Sigve in finals. Sigve and I ended our day playing any kind of unhooked jumps on the big air (360 Indy-glide and stuff). It is always so much fun to ride with friends and to push the sport together.

On Monday, unfortunately the wind was very light. The organisers decided to start the race – with all the skiers and snowboarders starting at the same time! So that was a lot of fun. I used my atom08 12m which is a powerful kite with very nice handling in the light wind conditions.  I finished 5th which allowed me to keep my advantage over Sigve and Marreck in the overall standings

After to much fun in race section, Marreck and I moved the rainbow shaped slider behind a kicker!  It ended to be an epic session on the slope.

On Tuesday, the forecast was good but actually produced a fair amount of unstable wind. After many talks between the riders and the judges, it was decided that ‘best-line’ could start. The judges situated themselves at the bottom of the face and using their binoculars to see  the competition progress.

I choose to ride a 9m prototype Blurr that Flexifoil’s R&D gave me a while ago to get safely and easy to the top and to pack down fast. It was very intense to line up as in a derby. I leaded the run, followed by Marreck with his white kite, it was really a lot of fun. I finished third at the overall!

I had a lot of fun in Bernina, and I hope to get good conditions next year for that kind of event.

Article: Flexifoil