The Tour triumphs in Tignes - James Cove, Tignes
Friday March 13, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

The men's skiing event was won by Matthius Haunholder from Austria, a first time winner.  While the Swiss snowboarder, Geraldine Fasnacht made an amazing comeback in the women's event by taking the title.

It was her first competition since she badly injured her knee in Sochi, Russia, last year.

The Frenchman, Thomas Diet, came second in the men's skiing after putting in one of the biggest cliff jumps of the day.

The full results are at the bottom of this story.

The Grande Balme - 500m of extreme ridingHowever, the Freeride World Tour is about far more than the winners and losers as it is a truly amazing spectacle as the riders hurl themselves down a mountain face choosing any route they want and doing steep colouirs, cliffs and jumps along the way. 

After the bad weather of previous days we woke up here in Tignes to a blue sky powder day - perfect for the event. 

Hundreds of spectators lined the pistes and many chose to ski past the base of the Grande Balme just to see a little bit of what is a truly spectacular skiing event.

Sadly Adrien Coirier, from France, was badly injured after he fell on a steep section and crashed down the rocks. It brought gasps of shock from the crowd but the rescue services were on hand within minutes.

He was taken by helicopter to hospital and fortunately was not seriously injured. He broke his shoulder and 3 ribs, but the rumours circulating after the accident were far worse. 

The medical team was on the mountain with him for 40 minutes and the longer it went on the more worried people became.

The competition was delayed for an hour but when it resumed none of the other riders seemed to be affected by his accident and put on an amazing show.

“I spent a lot of time looking at the Grand Balme face, even until late the night before," says the winner of the men's skiing event, Matthius Haunholder. "I knew I had to be brave to make the difference on this slope so I took a line with a landing in a steep spot, like the snowboarder Xavier de Le Rue. I was able to master the consecutive turns and jumps."

See below for an interview with Matthius Haunholder.  We reckon he's pretty pleased!

We all watched in bright sunshine with loud rock music being pumped out over the PA system.  "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones seemed particularly appropiate as one of the riders came down. We had "Light My Fire" by The Doors, "Whole lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin and countless other rock anthems.

Take a look at the video below of the course inspection on Wednesday and we'll bring you a new video of the event over the weekend, so keep an eye open for that as it has some great footage of the riders.

An ambition fulfilledAs you may know if you have been reading the web site this week I was lucky enough to be on a special media jury that helped to judge the event and there's a report here on what it was like to be a judge.

Our head judge was the legendary skier, Glen Plake. It's always been an ambition of mine to meet him.

See James Cove's blogs from the event.

THE RESULTS

Men's Skiing

(1) Mathias Haunholder, Austria. (2) Thomas Diet, France. (3) Henrik Windstedt, Sweden.

Women's Skiing

(1) Caroline Meynet, France. (2) Marja Persson, Sweden. (3) Elyse Saugstad, USA.

Men's Snowboarding

(1) Xavier de le Rue, France. (2) Max Zipser, Austria. (3) Alex Coudray, Switzerland.

Women's Snowboarding

(1) Geraldine Fasnacht, Switzerland. (2) Susan Moll, USA. (3) Anniina Karvinen, Finland.

What a day!

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