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Monster Whitestyle launches year in style
Grant Fielder Reflects on Building the Course in Austrian Snow. 3 February 2011
Definitive’s Grant Fielder raised the bar even higher last weekend, building the course at the prestigious Whitestyle event in Leogang, Austria.
The largest freeride mountain bike event of the year in snow has become a special annual event to kick start the year…..
I set off two weeks before to build the course and like every year, make it bigger! I once again outdid myself. Now Monster have signed a 3 year contract for the event as well as the bike park for the summer. I had one thing in mind, make everything monster big and I did just that!
Pointing fingers and shifting snow was the most time consuming part of building, but once in place it started to look sweet. The course was spiced up a bit more than last year featuring the step-up step-down feature at the start; we call this the satellite dish, enabling riders to ride more technically but still through down big moves.
Two days before the event started we had one metre of snow fall. Consequently sweeping and shovelling this amount of snow was worrying me but we managed to shift it all in the end. All the riders came on the Thursday and they practiced until the evening.
A few adjustments on the course had to be made on the Friday ready for the big final in the evening. Then I sat back and watched from the judge tower and the contest went off big time! The progression on such big obstacles was exactly how I planned and the results were perfect with my two good UK friends taking 1st and 2nd place.
I have rode in Whitestyle every year in the past but decided I had to sit this one out due to the intense course preparation. Unfortunately, I was just not in the right mind set to ride, so I had to let the guys get on and fight it out!
So that was the first event out of the way. Now its time to ride properly, on dirt instead of snow! I have been learning tons of new tricks and general bike handling skills as I want to ride more big mountain events. Big mountain is where free ride mountain biking originated.
Most weekends from April will be crammed with the FMB world tour so this is what I will be planning to focus on. Last year was to make sure the tour worked in my role as representative on the advisory group, but now I can ride and compete without having to worry.
I’m very excited about 2011. Lots of events and filming are coming up, I will keep you posted!