2011 Monster Energy Budapest Fridge Big Air
By Luke Van Valin
Hello There Empire friends. I, Luke Van Valin, have just made my triumphant return from the Monster Energy Budapest Fridge big air, and I figure (in blogging fashion) that I should comment on my experience.
Well to begin it was Laurent Favre’s (Lolo) birthday celebration/big air after party last night and that was…fun.
Certainly the first time I have seen an open bar where a wristband gets any number of athletes any number of bottles they may desire. Yeah. Excessive.
Colby, PK, and I sang that Backstreet Boys song: “you’re all I ever wanted, all I ever needed” in a dark underground catacomb bar. That was randomly hilarious.
The big air was sick. Elias Ambühl won because he found out right before finals that he sold his Porsche, and therefore got out of the pinch he was in by buying a Ferrari before he sold the thing. When he got the text on his busted phone he was like, “Yes! Now I’m stoke, I’m gonna fu&$@$ kill this comp now!” Colby calls him Elias Amb-Jon. (Amb-yune) as in Jon Olsson. He stomped a pretty big wobble cork 1440 to straight ice. PK was skiing awesome too, his switch 12 was thunder-stomped, the guys a bull.
And of course Kai Mahler is a new 16 year old badass out of Switzerland, watch out for him. Other highlights belong to Lolo for winning man of the day as well as the style comp with a switch cork 5 screaming Japan on his new 4FRNT Skis. Oh Ha! At the awards show on stage, this dude was supposed to stuff a cake in Laurent’s face in front of several hundred fans, but the cake had frozen into a big, round, heavy chocolate lump, and the jerk almost broke Lolo’s nose with it! As for Budapest, nice city, nice people, good times, goulash.
Big thanks to Joe Parsons and Jenny Csupo at Monster.
