While temperatures gets better in southern Europe, it is still wintertime for Northern Europe and this year Latvia and Estonia have had more snow than the 70 past years which is pretty good for snowboarding in the area. Last year PBRJ got cancelled for lack of snow and 2 years ago the resorts were struggling with artificial slush on top of muddy hills.
This year the PBRJ was held in Kuutsemäe, small resort in Estonia close to the Latvian border. The snowpark was in a good shape and looked fun to ride and the guys prepared a classic set up with a flat down box, one straight rail and one plastic pipe that you could only hit from the side (as a bowl coping).
Around 90 people showed up at the registration from different parts of Estonia, Latvia and Lituania, our local Volcom distributor helping out the kids by organizing a bus to pick up the ones without rides.
The contest started quickly with the 15 and under category with Nauris Putenis “the spinner” spinning his way all along the boxes but couldn’t get on the podium, young Domenik Vaiksaar insuring his 3rd place, Toms Cakars taking 2nd and Joseph Saliste getting new Nitro bindings, tons of other prizes taking the win and qualifying to the champs in Laax, good job!
In the girls division, the battle was fierce between all but especially Brit Kask, Miryam Kim Rääbis and Ivika Jurgenson and in the end Ivika took the win.
Judging the 16 and over division wasn’t an easy thing, especially when everybody rides at the same time, makes “doubles” for fun and the wind blows the BBQ meat fumet right under your nose. But our judges were high trained professionals and didn’t miss any of the action: Rasmus Joost took the 3rd place with some good style and board control, Kevin Kok was riding really solid all day long and had a lot of fun with his “moustache” crew and ended at the second spot and Arturs Cukunde finished first of the qualification and won the final, meticulously locking one hammer after one in every obstacle.
The level stepped up a notch in the open division, with all sorts of spins and crazy gaps that made everyone cheering whith OOOHHs and AAAHHHs and pumping everyone with a good riding level. A lot of tricks went down but after the scores tabulation, Keijo Ruuven took the 3rd place (and 100€), Toms Petrusevics had a whole fan club supporting him and landed a supersmooth fs 270 front board on the down box, gaping the first box from the straight rail kicker (don’t know if you got it) and won Electric’s Gooeyest move of the day (50€) and managed to finish at the second place getting some more cash (150€). Siim Aunison was stoked all day and on fire riding non stop, helping shape the rails, moving boxes and snowboarding like madman, he took the win (and 200€) with stylish Hurricanes on the flat rail and good combos on the other spots. Good job everyone and see you all on the 10 of April in LAAX for the Euro champs.
The day finished with a raffle for everyone to get extra prizes, some refreshments and a long drive back to Latvia. Special thanks to Mark Duubas, Gizmo for the video, Janis Podzins and Jaanus Ree for the pics, the BOARDS.LV crew for organizing everything and the smiles, judges, and our friends in the industry for the extra prizes : Nitro, Nixon, Electric , Aerial7 and Circa
