etnies

Chi-Town Boost Mobile Pro

On March 26 and 27, Boost Mobile put on one of the biggest snowboarding contests the city of Chicago has ever seen, offering $250,000 (the largest-ever prize purse in snowboarding history) to throw your professional ass off a sketchy kicker and hit some wack quarterpipe. Included was
a $20,000 purse for a Rail Jam on March 26. As you can imagine, every professional  snowboarder in the world was there for a piece of the action. ThirtyTwo / etnies team riders like John Jackson, Wille Yli-Luoma, Tyler Lepore and Alexis Waite were all ready to get their hands on the loot.

Friday night was the Rail Jam, and the set-up was pretty cool--twenty stairs with three
different options to shred down. 1. Round bar rail, straight down 2. Straight ledge with a lower step-down rail 3. Hubba ledge, flat, down

John Jackson and Tyler Lepore both headed into the Rail Jam session with some serious hammers from practice. Once everything got under way, Tyler was doing frontside 270s over the flat part on the hubba ledge to frontside boards to 270 out! Check the footy! John was throwing all kinds of rail combos, frontside 270s
to frontside boards down the round bar, plus a nose press to frontside board to 180 out on the ledge. With twenty grand on the line, riders were going for broke. Once the smoke cleared from the hammer blasting, MFM won.

Okay, okay, now onto the main event! Did I tell you about the set-up? No. Okay, here we go. The contest was a Big Air jump that went straight into a quarter pipe. Remember this was Chicago, in the parking lot of Soldier Field. There was about 500 feet of metal and wood scaffolding set-up, throwing riders into a huge cheese wedge of snow. The jump was about 45 to 50 feet long, and once the
rider hit the landing, it was straight into the sketchiest quarterpipe ever! But with sixty grand for first, thirty grand for second and fifteen grand for third, riders were trying their best to clear the jump and get up the quarterpipe.

Even with an extra ten feet of scaffolding, most riders couldnt even clear the jump, let alone get enough speed to hit the quarterpipe! John Jackson was able to put together a solid run with a frontside 360 Indy to a McTwist on the quarterpipe. But the man of the hour was Tyler Lepore, who showed up last minute. With no
practice runs, Tyler ascended to the top of the jump, strapped in, and freight trained a frontside corked 720 to a huge backflip on the quarterpipe. Good enough to get him into the eight-man final, but Tyler couldnҒt come through with another solid run.

After the main event, Dialated Peoples, Kanye West and Ludacris pumped the crowd up with a free concert. What a way to end the day! Special thanks to all the ThirtyTwo and etnies riders; Chris from The Shop; RQ Board Shop crew Brian, Shakil and Todd; Torque Center dudes; Chris Shred Shop and the Zumiez Kids.