Massive thanks to Animal for putting this write up together on how I did last weekend at the Scottish Indoor Champs!
Scottish Indoor Champoionships
Last Saturday was the Scottish Indoor Freestyle Championships in Snow Factor Braehead. Loads of people came from all over Britain, from Aviemore to Manchester which made a pretty good turnout! I was in the 16+ category for the first time which brought a lot more competition from guys like the Trinders, Connor Carey and many more. We got an hour of practice and I managed to figure out my run and land it once or twice but when it came to qualifiers I didn’t quite put them down the way I wanted and sketched out a bit on both. Luckily I still managed to get enough points to qualify through to the finals.
- Front 5 off the toes, P: Brian Moore
I had a few more warm up runs and then I was into the two run, best run counts final. I managed to put my first run down which was a front one on, cab one out of a donkey rail into a front 5 off the toes on the jump then a hard way cab one on to back one out of the corrie pipe and finally a switch lip 270 out on a flat bar at the bottom. I had wanted to step my run up the second time but sadly I came off the top rail early and didn’t manage to complete it. In the end my first run was good enough for 1st in the 16+ and 1st overall!
Right now I’m still studying for my Standard Grade Exams but I’m now half way through them!! 
Only a few weeks left and then I’ll be heading up to Aviemore to do a bit of fitness with the Trinders hopefully!
Young Scot Awards
A couple of weeks back I had an amazing night at the Young Scot Awards as I’d been nominated for the sport section. It was an amazing night full of some really inspirational stories across all categories.
I arrived at the event and walked down the red carpet (which was pretty cool) into the Crown Plaza hotel where I got an amazing dinner and some pretty good entertainment!
All suited up for the Awards
All suited up for the AwardsAll suited up for the Awards Once dinner was over I headed over to the Clyde Auditorium for the presentation of the awards. After what felt like an incredibly long wait it was time for the sport category. I was hoping to win as it would be great to get the recognition for myself and for snowboarding but at the same time I was pretty nervous about going up on stage to receive the award. In the end the award deservedly went to Samantha Kinghorn, a wheelchair racer who is looking to compete in the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth games! From then on I could just sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the awards including performances from Jahmene Douglas, Nina Nesbitt and Misha B.
Check out this quick little video which was made to be shown on the night to let everyone know what I had done:
Murray Buchan Double
So stoked to see Murray has landed his first double in the pipe! He’s been working on this for a while now so it’s amazing to see he’s landed it!
GB trip to Mayrhofen
I was recently away in Mayrhofen, Austria with the GB guys to get a bit of end of season riding done and it was sick! I wasn’t too sure if I was going to be able to go as I’ve got my final exams of the year coming up but eventually I made the call and it was definitely the right choice!
I travelled out there on the 7th of April with Jamie Trinder and Henry Shackleton. After a pretty long travel day and a lot of last minute arrangements we finally made it to ‘Hof. When we got in we were quickly greeted by our coach Hamish before heading off to bed.
The first day was really sick! The weather was really nice and the park was pretty perfectly shaped. The lap is so short so we managed to get an unbelievable amount of runs in each day. I spent most of the first day getting used to snow again and working on getting all different rotations down on jumps. I’m really stoked to have gotten all four 9s landed as I’ve not tried them all on snow before. During the first day Katie Ormerod tried her first double backflips which was mega sick! It definitely got the rest of the team motivated to try a few doubles…
Day two was the day for progression and almost everyone was heading up with some sort of a double in their head. In the morning we all got warmed up and started to prep whatever double we were thinking of trying. I had the double backflip in my head so I did quite a few tucked singles to get the feeling in my head. I had decided at the start of the day that I was going to try it after lunch once it had softened up which was probably not the best idea as it was soft enough before lunch and that’s when everyone first started trying them so I had to do my first try by myself hahahaha. Katie O was the first to go for it and she stomped it on her first try! Then Henry and Jamie tried some cab double underflips. Henry got a really clean one before lunch and Jamie got so close! So after lunch it was just me and Jamie to try to land one. It took me a couple of runs to get it back into my head but eventually I felt ready so I just chucked it. I was so stoked to get my first one over with and from then on out it wasn’t as bad. On my third try it came round to my feet. It was a bit scrappy but I was stoked to have landed one.
The next day I headed up and wanted to land more than one and get the landing cleaner. My prep took a lot less time and I landed the double on my second attempt of the day. I then went on to land another two in a row right after it! I also did some more on the Thursday and landed it first try so I’m mega happy to have progressed a bit each day in a different way. We then had a bad weather day on Friday so we all chilled and went and did a bit of swimming.
Saturday and Sunday were booth pretty fun but sadly I tweaked my knee a bit on the Saturday so I ended up just taking it easy both days as I’d already done the double which was my main objective for the trip.
I’m now back in the UK and doing my final exams which isn’t too fun. When they’re all done I’ve got a couple days off before I go back to school so hopefully I’ll be heading up to Cairngorm for a bit to do a bit of fitness with The Trinders.
Check out these shots of all the doubles that went down in ‘Hof!
Vans Hi Standard
Yesterday I was in Cairngorm for the Vans Hi Standard competition which had by far the sickest set up I’ve ever seen anywhere in Scotland! It was a style comp and had a really sick format. There was a big air session and a rail session and you were judged on each of them to decide your final score but as well as that the judges were handing out tokens every time you landed a sick trick which you exchanged for £20 at the prize giving!
I was really stoked with how I did in both sessions and managed to put down a couple good trick on the jump and on the rails. Since it was a style comp you couldn’t do any rotations over a 720 so I was mostly doing FS 5s and some switch BS 1s all day. The rail set-up was really cool with a down bar, a down box, a giant tyre/hip and a down flat down. I mostly rode the DFD and did some backboards through the kink, gap to BS lips and some 50-50 270 switch ups but I also hit the down bar and did a 50-50 BS 3 out.
Both sessions were really fun and I managed to win £100 in each section! I’m also really stoked for my older brother Danny who won £80 on the jump, £100 on the rails, £180 for the best BS 180 of the day and £300 for 1st overall!
Today I’m getting packed and flying to Mayrhofen with Jamie Trinder and Henry Shackleton to ride with the GB guys which should be really sick! I’m out there for a week so hopefully I’ll get some new tricks down and maybe a bit of filming done…
Stalking Jamie Trinder
Check out this sick little edit from Gonzilla TV about a day in the life of Jamie Trinder! Really cool documentary format to it and hopefully they will make a few more of these in the future!
Bearsden Spring Session
I had some pretty good sessions with my brother Chris at Bearsden and we managed to get a bit of filming done with the new Ion camera that he won at the Brits. It’s pretty cool and really easy to use and the quality is pretty good. Here is a little edit from the two days we had.
Flachauwinkel 2013 Edit
I managed to have an amazing 10 days in Flachauwinkel, Austria with the Junior GB Team. Now that I’m back I’ve had a bit of time to put together an edit of all the shots I managed to get while I was out there so here it is!
Right now I’m trying to plan a trip to Mayerhofen with the GB Team sometime at the start of April to get some slushy kicker riding and to hopefully learn a couple new tricks. Fingers crossed I manage to get something sorted so I can get a bit more riding done before all my exams start…
Scottish Team at Cairngorm
Had an amazing weekend at cairngorm a few weeks ago with the Scottish Team and we managed to put together this pretty sick edit, check it out!
