It’s amazing to think that the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic organisers had difficulties with a lack of snow up at Cypress not 2 months ago, considering the awesome coverage they have up there right now. With that in mind, I somehow managed to squeeze out roughly 6 hours of boarding right across the resort’s 2 mountains and loved every minute of it.

Towards the end of the day I headed down into the “Bell Power Park” in the hope that some crazy talented skiers and boarders would slide through and launch themselves off the various jumps and table tops providing me with the opportunity to grab some shots. I can’t say that there were too many people coming through, but I did get the chance to talk to the resident park maintenance guys who were more than happy (HUGE THANKS GUYS!) to strap on their boards and throw down a few mad runs for me so that I could walk away with at least something.

Keeping us all breathless until the last round of jumps, ultimately the gorgeous Lydia Lassila landed one of her trademark jumps, a difficult triple-flipping, triple-twisting maneuver that had gave her a total score of 214.74, just 7 points ahead of her nearest Chinese opponent and securing Australia’s second gold!

Taking Australia’s overall tally to three 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic medals (2x gold, 1x silver), it represents Australia’s most successful Winter Olympic performance in history and provided Lydia with more than enough ammunition to push the need for better home-soil facilities (reducing the need for athletes to be based outside of Australia full-time for training) and funding for the sport when she spoke with Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

I’m really proud of Lydia and also Jacqui, who finished a olympic-best 5th place, and Liz (12th). The girls were outstanding and ensured that Australia’s historical dominance of the women’s circuit for aerial skiing is maintained!

Going into the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as current Ski Cross World Champion and ranked number 2 in the world (yeah I’m not sure how that works either), Ashleigh had a good amount of confidence in her chances for Olympic glory. Taking inspiration from her fellow West Coast gold medalist Maëlle Ricker, Ashleigh remained strong throughout all qualification and early final races and was pretty stoked when it was all over.

“The most amazing moment of my entire life,” she said. “I’m just so proud of myself to have come here ready to race. There was nothing more I could have done to be better equipped to perform well here.”

Source: CTVolympics.ca

Congratulations Ashleigh. Another brilliant Canadian performance!

Competing in drastically better conditions than the women last night, Canadian Alexandre Bilodeau rose to the occasion and stole the top podium position from the Aussie with a flawless run that resulted in him becoming the first ever Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil.

Try as he might, Dale Begg-Smith’s equally impressive final run, which featured a back puck/pike with position and a 720 off-axis dspin, wasn’t enough to secure his second Olympic gold in as many attempts.

“I skied the way I wanted to ski, and that’s all I can control,” said Begg Smith.

“There was a lot of good runs today, and it just depends on the day.”

“I think it’s great that Canada won gold and the crowd was really happy with it, and they went crazy.”

“We’re all here to put on a show and I think they enjoyed what they saw.”

Source: foxsports.com.au

I’m so glad I was able to catch the event! Needless to say I left the Atlantic Canada House on Granville Island with a permanent grin etched on my dial from ear to ear.

The plan was to get up there around 6pm, meet up with Dan and Candace at the bottom of one of the Quad chairs and then just kick around the resort for a few hours. The place was pretty much deserted when we arrived in the carpark which was a great sign. It meant that the slopes would be open and the lift line-ups minimal – desirable conditions by anyone’s standards.

Everything was AOK until I looked down and strapped into Ryan’s old board (which I was borrowing for the night) noticing that the binds were actually set up for a “goofy footer” (left hand rider) which Ryan is. I know, I’m left-handed and this should have been spot on for my needs, but due to the same quirk that renders me a “right-hander” when playing cricket, soccer etc I actually board “regular”. Soooo… after a small amount of consideration at the top of the first chairlift to heading back down and switching the binds over, I figured I’d give it a shot down the first slope and just see how it felt. Thankfully (in terms of saving time), it felt ok and I was able to keep up with Ry and Corrie to the bottom so I decided to just wing it for the rest of the night.

As expected, across the two peaks only the long intermediate trails were lit which meant, after having met up with Dan and Candace, we spent the best part of 3 hours hurtling down the hills with reckless abandon. It was actually kinda tricky conditions as the recent combination of fine sunny days and cold clear nights have created a pretty icy cover and finding edges was sometimes difficult. But… I managed to stay upright the entire night and only called it quits along with everyone else once the cold started to penetrate both my boots and gloves. It got to the point where tucking into a few pitches of beer and some nachos and chili fries were a more appealing prospect (like you really need much more motivation) so we headed to the lodge for a little late night Apres Ski!

Considering the close proximity (30-40 minutes by car) to Vancouver downtown and the quality of trails, Cypress is a great location for night skiing and I hope to get up there a few more times under lights before the season wraps up in a couple of months.