White Style Results
Leogang, February 1st – Europe’s young guns dominated the fifth anniversary of the “White Style presented by Kona” winter slopestyle competition in Leogang last Friday evening. Riders from North America made into the top ten: Darren Berrecloth came fifth, Cam McCaul sixth and Jamie Goldman seventh. Great Britain’s other well-known faces, Sam Reynolds and Grant Fielder, placed eighth and ninth. A highlight clip featuring the best of the action and the three winning runs will be available on watch26.tv very soon.

You can bet the beer was flowing the beats were going. This is Austria and they know how to party. Photo – Ale Di Lullo
More than 2,000 spectators made their way to the White Style course, designed and built by Kona Clump team rider Grant ‘Chopper’ Fielder. Grant got lots of props from the other riders for the set up that included; an igloo at the start, a set of two doubles, followed by two massive fruit bowls combinations (with a 15ft. drop) as well as a huge double at the finish (about 40ft. lip to lip).
Grant Fielder was responsible for course design and build. Andlooking concerned for candid photos. Photo – Ale Di Lullo
Everything was made out of snow so it was a challenging set up. But some of the world’s best impressed the spectators and each other by pulling off big tricks. After the first training session on Thursday some riders swapped their small travel full suspension bikes to hardtails – confirmation that despite its size the course was smooth.
Martin Söderström dominated in qualifying but was foiled by a crash and a mechanical in the finals. Photo – Dennis Katinas

The qualifications on Friday evening were dominated by Swedish rider Martin Söderström (technical and clean riding including double tailwhips), Yannick Granieri from France (huge backflips), American Cam McCaul (great style and big bag of tricks), Canadian Darren Berrecloth (360 look downs). Linus Sjoeholm (SWE), Amir Kabbani (GER), Sam Pilgrim (GBR) and Jamie Goldman (USA) rounded out the top 8 qualifiers. Finals are of course always a new ball game.
 

Amir Kabani stretching it out on his way to fourth place. Photo – Ale Di Lullo
Martin Söderström, who won the qualifying, couldn’t finish his first run because of a technical issue. Then he crashed pretty hard on his second fun in finals trying to pull a double tailwhip overshooting the 40 footer – 11th place for him. Jamie Goldman did what he does best, pulling a huge backflip off the big fruit bowl. Unfortunately he slipped his pedals landing a backflip superman on the last double to finish 7th. Cam McCaul, Darren Berrecloth and Amir Kabbani rode clean runs but it was France, Sweden and Great Britain on top of the podium.

Jamie Goldman busting a huge flip in the backwards direction. Photo – Ale Di Lullo
Yannick Granieri showed his ups with huge 360s, backflips and tailwhips in his first run. He might have taken home the title if he had landed his 360 tailwhip drop in his second run. Instead he over-rotated and missed the next jumps. Third is still a good result for him and a good start for 2010 on his new bike.

Yannick Granieri impressing his new sponsor Commençal with a trip to the podium. Photo – Dennis Katinas
Linus Sjoeholm, Martin Söderström’s best riding buddy, was the big surprise of the contest. His clean execution and range of technical tricks impressed the judges and spectators. He began with a 360 at the starting drop, a double tailwhip at the first double, superman at the second jump, backflip off the fruit bowl, barspin into the 2nd fruit bowl, tailwhip at the big drop and he finished his run with a flipwhip at the last double. Linus’ second place and 1,000 Euros were well deserved.
Darren Berrecloth was talking about 360 look downs before Crankworx but he didn’t toss one. Maybe he has them dialled now? Photo – Ale Di Lullo
The man of the day was Sam Pilgrim, no question: tailwhip at the start, frontflip at the first double, backflip no hander at the second, 360 x-up out of the fruit bowl, tuck nohander and backflip at the 2nd fruit bowl, as well as a backflip table at the last jump. Sam couldn’t stop joking after his success having 1,800 Euros in his pocket: “I will spend all the money on sweets, for real!” But then he got serious. “Crashing on snow is not that funny, because it’s much harder than you might think. It took me a bit to cope with it when I competed the first time at the White Style, but man, it was fun this year and Chopper did a really great job, big respect!” 

A small, low flying Englishman – somewhere above Leogang Austria. Sam Pilgrim rises to the occasion for the win. Photo – Ale Di Lullo
White Style Final Results
1 Sam Pilgrim Diamondback GBR 

2 Linus Sjöholm Scott SWE 

3 Yannick Granieri Commencal FRA 

4 Amir Kabbani Mongoose GER 

5 Darren Berrecloth Specialized CAN 

6 Cameron McCaul Trek USA 

7 Jamie Goldman Santa Cruz USA 

8 Sam Reynolds DMR GBR 

9 Grant Fielder Kona GBR 

10 Niki Leitner YT Industries AUT 

11 Martin Söderström NS Bikes SWE 

12 Jakub Vencl AGang CZE
Diminutive Euro-riders dominate the podium. Lef to right; Linus Sjöholm, Sam Pilgrim and Yannick Granieri. Photo – Dennis Katinas
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