Pleasure Recap: Sudden Rush Banked Slalom Laax 2022
The 2022 SuddenRush Banked Slalom Laax. Photo: Philipp Ruggli
Racing is not very popular amongst the average Snowboarder. It does not fit in with the image of the shaka-bra throwing cruiser dude or the wrecked edges of a snowpark regular. For many years I wasn’t any different to the mainstream truism that racing was not cool at all. But then curiosity took prevalence and I wanted to know if it was really that bad. To spice things up, the Pleasure Crew all agreed to race each other for the sake of fun and a little shit talk.
Article by Stefan Geissmann.
Welcome to racing
Being used to the quality standard of all parks built in Laax, I imagined the race to be smooth and ridden with the sharp blade. Later I found out how wrong I was.
In order to provide the possibility of training for everybody, the first gondola was at eight. With sleepy eyes, my fellow Pleasure men and I made it to the top at 8.30. After the first turns down Plaun-run, voices in my head started asking questions. The snow was near to pure ice and incredibly fast. As we reached the start of the track, we laid eyes on a course that was not only icy but full of bumps and imperfections. “Welcome to racing”, I sarcastically answered the voices in my head.
Pleasures no. 1, Stefan Geissmann. Photo: Philipp Ruggli
Practice.
Then the practice started. Watching others riding the course was hectic; some were going full blast and not making it further than a handful of turns, others desperately tried to brake inside the corners and sketched throughout the course in a manner that made us all hold our breath. To be honest, I was a bit scared. Frankly, everybody seemed to be and there was a lot of chatting and strategy on how to survive the course. Despite this being a race, the mood at the start gate was very mellow, people made jokes, gave each other fist bumps and then sent it through the start gate. This camaraderie gave me a bit of confidence.
A true racer?
Then it was my turn, and what followed was one of the sketchiest runs I’ve done for a long time. Not only did I never see the course before, but the masters and pros, starting a day prior, left a lot of icy bumps for us. Being a bit faster than the guy in front of me, I was able to witness him high-siding on a turn, going straight into the safety net and tumbling into chunks of Ice. After making it somehow to the end of the course, the voices in my head did not only ask questions – they were screaming at me: What the fuck are you doing here? This is too icy, too sketchy, too early and not fun at all. I would have to channel my inner racer if there even was one, I thought.
Zen Snowboards founder Reto Neiger. Photo: Philipp Ruggli
Slush dreams vs. reality.
To me, riding banked turns is naturally a kid’s discipline. In the woods, close to every beginner T-Bar, there are banked turns built by the act of numerous children pizzaing their skis. After a nice day in a slushy park, I always loved to ride those kind of snake runs with my friends on the way back down. Burning legs, close calls and chasing your friends at the end of the day was always fun, but this banked was far from what I imagined the ideal race to be.
Organisational difficulties.
By this time, we lost one member of the Pleasure crew thanks to corner number 3 and a second member had already lost the race due to food poisoning the night before—the spirits were semi-good, to say the least.
As the rookies to racing we are, we didn’t fully get the format of doing our two runs in separate time slots. So, showing up at two o’clock, hoping for slush, the legends organising the start gate told us that we missed the first run and could only do the second run. On the one hand, I was bummed that I missed the chance of doing two runs; on the other, I was quite happy that I only had to do the run one last time.
Pleasure’s No. 2, Tassilo Hager. Photo: Philipp Ruggli
Finally racing.
So finally, the race was on for us and there was only this one try. I dropped in and found myself on a bumpy hell ride. Luckily, the corners facing the sun were moderately slushy, but at the same time, the course got incredibly rough. Trying to be as agile and low as possible, I thundered through the corners. The run had changed completely and those bumps in the corners were no joke at all.
Amazingly, mid-run, the fun appeared. Who needs perfectly shaped banked turns when you can have the exciting feeling of riding a bull with a board? What makes Banked slaloms fun, I learnt, is not the ice, of course, but the imperfections in the run. The bumps that make you react in a split second, the close calls and the insane burn on the back leg you feel when you try to catch your breath after the finish line. This turned out to be fun, I had to admit, and snowboarding, not being a culture of racers and being the fastest, can be hella fun if you for once do exactly that: Racing your friends for fun.
Not too bad after all.
Compared to the Laax Open, where top athletes compete on a perfect course in front of a huge audience and TV coverage, the Sudden Rush Banked Slalom is the complete opposite of that. The event is truly open for every rider out there because it is not about stunning stunts but the simple act of riding a board. That leads to a vibe of equality as every single human capable of riding a board can participate.
The snow conditions might not have been perfect this year; keeping that in mind, the shapers did a very good job, not only with the course but also by proving that there was no way of beating them in the men's open category.
We enjoyed the contest emotions, slams, burning legs, food poisonings, pumping lungs, laughter, shit-talk, hellos and "nice to meet yous". Thanks to the nice people involved in a terrific job of making the Sudden Rush Banked Slalom an event full of good memories. Let's race again next year!