What you just saw was Red Bull's Crashed Ice, a four-person, downhill ice-skating race through a specially designed obstacle course in the middle of a city. Downhill racing and ice hockey. Seriously, it's like peanut butter and chocolate: I cannot believe that no one thought of this sooner. Previously, it has been held in Québec, Helsinki, Davos, and Duluth (?). This weekend, the 2009 season finished in Lausanne.
The course started at Place du Château (near where I used to live), came down Avenue de l'Universitie (right by an apartment that I was denied), and finished up at Place de la Riponne (next to another apartment denied to me). At Place de la Riponne, there was a huge, packed crowd of idiots pressed together watching a giant TV screen and cheering on the competitors at the finish. Jens (German), Jen's girlfriend, Ana (also German), and I were some of those idiots.
Fig. 1: There is not law against public drinking in Switzerland, so the savvy event attendee always comes prepared.The time trials having been conducted on Friday, Saturday was the big finale. 16 heats of 4 racers, followed by 8 heats, 4 heats, etc. Of the 64 competitors, it seemed like about 40 were Swiss, maybe 6 were Finnish, and then there were a handful of Austrians, Germans, and one Swede. Although Jens and Ana wanted to root for the Germans, I decided to root for the Finns when possible. Not only are some of my good friends of Finnish ancestry, but I also have to admit to having a soft spot for Finnish athletes in general. Probably, this is due to the fact that Teemu Selanne is absolutely unstoppable in NHL 94 for the SNES.
We thought it was curious that the Finns were always the first seeds in each of the heats, but this fact became less and less curious as the Finns cruised to easy victories in the early rounds. Clearly, the Swiss competitors were local talent picked up to "fill out the card" and were not much of a match for the Finnish ringers.
Fig. 2: One of the competitors. I have no idea who he is, in particular, but he's pretty representative of just how badass the guys were.The final race was between 3 Finns and the sole Swede, so I was pretty confident of a victory for the Suomi. Of course, it would be difficult: the aforementioned Swede was none other than 6-time Red Bull Crashed Ice world champion, Jasper Felder. Although he hadn't won a competition in a few years, he's a crafty veteran with a lot of experience. The race started off close, but a late slip-up by Artu Pihlainen opened up a lane which the opportunistic Felder did not miss. He cruised easily to his record-setting seventh Red Bull Crashed Ice championship. Truly amazing.
Fig. 3: Jasper Felder -- seven-time champion -- is like the Lance Armstrong of Crashed Ice. Except, he's actually likable. And he certainly isn't on any performance enhancing drugs. And also, he looks like a pirate.Vaud -- the canton which contains Lausanne -- only has about 670 thousand inhabitants. Thus, when one of them becomes famous, you tend to hear about it pretty often. The local newspapers cover every Stanislaus Wawrinka early-round exit; literally every minute that Thabo Sefalosha is on the court is recorded in detail; and it was the top story when Yverdon-les-Bains native Whitney Toyloy was crowned "Miss Schweiz."
The stars definitely came out to shine at Crashed Ice. As we were standing right next to the pathway between the VIP area and the television cameras, famous Swiss people would brush right by us on their way to softball interviews to kill the time between races. What kind of famous Swiss people, you ask? How about:
Fig. 4: Why, it's Stéphane Lambiel, two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist in Men's Singles Figure skating.
Fig. 5: Hardcore Formula "Un" fans might recognize this young gentleman as Sébastien Buemi, the new pilot for Scuderia Toro Rosso.I also saw some hockey player, a city administrator of some sort, and an Austrian television presenter. It was truly like living in a dream.
4 comments:
I do not understand your punctuation after Duluth, MN. Why would the American home of curling not also be the home of downhill ski-hockey?
The man has a point.
Man, you can take Mike Preiner out of Minnesota, but you cannot take the Minnesota out of Mike Preiner.
What I meant was, Curling is a thinking man's game. It's like four-dimensional chess, on ice. Downhill ski-hockey is really a brutish, unintellectual sport, not fitting for the cultured minds of Duluth. It's really more of a "Twin Cities" thing, in my opinion.
I was suitably amped by the RBCI video, and clicked on the link post haste, only to find TWO UNINTELLIGIBLE language options - "Deutsch" and "Francais" - and I didn't take dutch OR finnish in high school! You'd think that such brutery would be peddled to the masses over here.
One would think that the NHL94 designers would have realized that post-goal checking would become the single most satisfying thing to do for hours on end, and just made a game out of that. "Checking Hero" or somesuch...
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