On Thursday, Feb. 5th in East River Park, NYC Red Bull is sponsoring a massive snowboard contest.  There is going to be a nine story drop in to an 80 ft hip jump!!  Gates open to the public at 3 and contest is from 6 to 9.  Sadly no girl riders were invited to this event.  Why not?  Shred betties is going to find out! 

  To show Red Bull that girls can ride too, I’m asking all shred betties available to head out to that contest and represent!  Show up and let Red Bull see just how many girl rippers are out there.  Get all your homies together and watch guys like Shaun White and Travis Rice tear it up all while hoping to see women added to the rooster for next year.

  How does such a hugely publicized event like this one excluding female pro riders make you feel?

I would be interested to ask Red Bull and find out if they considered inviting female riders, or did invite female riders and the female riders declined?  Not many girls will hit a jump that big, especially in that kind of situation, where they have a limited amount of space to build up speed - and a girl needs more distance to build up speed than a typical guy, just due to the specific issues of weight.

This also brings up something else, though… why the hell does it need to be an 80 foot hip jump?  I’d much rather watch a 60 footer, where the riders would be able to throw more technical and interesting tricks.  Most people wouldn’t do much more than straight air off something that big that’s on scaffolding and all that!

haha thats a really good point.  the jump is going be huge and it will probably scare the living daylights out of most.  i’m sure the riders invited will be able to handle it of course, but they aren’t going to be throwing techy tricks on a jump of its size.  i’m hoping to find somebody at the comp that will be insightful enough to answer these several questions.  i really and i think most people would wanna know if girl riders were invited and declined or if they just weren’t asked.  physiology does play its role in this because of the short distance to build up speed some im curious to interview and get some answers.

Yeah I’d be interested too - I know in one of these stadium comps a few years ago, there were 4 or 5 girls there, and the first girl to go didn’t clear the gap and like slammed into the side of the jump and fell into the safety net (can’t remember who it was, but the pics looked kinda scary! she was okay tho)  Anyway, that kinda cancelled the girls part in it because most of the girls didn’t want to hit it after seeing that she couldn’t get up enough speed to clear it. Wonder who that was, i should see if i can find it.  Hmm, how do you google “some girl fell off a jump at a stadium competition”

haha. i’ll try looking it up. do you remember what stadium comp it was?  i know they have the nissan x trail in the nokia dome in Japan every year.  there was one a year or two ago in some baseball stadium in the US.  i think it might have been in denver but im not positive.

Yeah I think it was in the US, in some kind of baseball or football stadium - coulda been the same one?

Did you make it to the Red Bull thingy?

I went to it last night and it was a lot of fun.  The drop in ramp was super steep and the snow on it was packed down and slow.  It looked as if it had melted a little then re-froze.  The riders weren’t getting enough peed to pull of any crazy tricks.  A 900 won the comp and it was the hardest trick anyone was throwing last night.  Terje did a big method, but that score got him nowhere.  Scotty Lago took third, Torstein Horgmo took second (he fell of the side of the jump on his last sudden death run so officials didn’t count it and let him go back to the top for a re-do), and Shane Pospisil won.  When it was announced that Shane had won the crowd tore down the baracade and everyone bum rushed him.  He was crowd surfed around! 

The whole park was a mob scene until the last couple runs of finals.  Everyone started leaving before Torstein and Shane went head to head for the win.  It was absolutely freezing out so that probably aided in the majority of the crowd’s decision to head home.  After all was said and done, Anthrax and Chuck D took the stage, but the crowd for that show was pretty small due to so many people leaving the event early. 

The announcers said that Redbull was bringing the comp back for next year, but if they do they need to change some things around.  The drop in ramp looked so scary, but even though it was nine stories high and steep, the riders were being slingshotted into the jump to build up enough speed to hit it.  For any girl rider to hit that jump she would need a snowmobile tow in to make it possible.  The men were rotating so slowly and the snow was crap.  It would be really hard for a female rider due to the whole weight issue to be able to make it over the hip. 

All of Redbull’s advertising for this event really paid off though.  For the beginning (and most of the contest) you could barely move it was so jam packed, but getting a good view of the jump was no problem because of the size of that thing!  It was a shame that more people didn’t stick around for the last couple runs.  The crowd’s energy probably would have helped out Torstein Horgmo in the end.  When he took his last hit, he landed on the left side of the jump (for the crowd it was their right) and there were a mere 6 people standing against the barricade watching.

The energy, the crowd, the music, the crazy light displays everywhere, the magnitude of the jump, the contest was an overall success.  The riders went as big as humanly possible with those conditions and it was insane!  Go211.som is going to be replaying the contest for everyone tonight Feb. 6th and it will be on NBC the 15th @ 5 p.m.

Did you girls hear Red Bull made Shaun White a secret halfpipe? It’s really sweet and he’s whipped up some pretty sick new tricks (check em out at http://www.shaunwhite.com/projectx/?fbid=IU9P86TYn4e and click on “new tricks”).

But where’s the halfpipe for ladies like Bleiler?

haha yeah, heard that set them back a bit - silverton doesn’t even have grooming equipment!  guess they’re not ready to spend that much on the ladies.

Hahaha I knew it was backcountry but no grooming equip? Wow.