Winter Whip thrills at Afriski

The 2022 Winter Whip Snowboard and Ski Festival presented by LW Mag was met by snow-covered Afriski Mountain Resort in Lesotho.

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LW Mag previously hosted the Park Lanes BMX tournament at Stoneridge Shopping Centres earlier this year.

The Winter Whip event was held in association with Andiamo Spritz, GoPro, Red Bull and DC Shoes.

Snowboarders and skiers participated in snowfall conditions during the highlight Slopestyle competition, which took place during the four-day event recently.

Throughout the event’s seven-year history this was the first time it snowed throughout the weekend, something not often experienced in Southern Africa, making for an interesting weekend.

The Friday practice kicked off in near-perfect conditions as partly cloudy weather closed in and light snowfall began to cover the resort.

On Saturday the official competition kicked off and participants woke up to a snow-covered resort and snowfall that would continue throughout the day and into the evening.

Although an amazing experience, this did not fall into the hands of the competitors who had to deal with low visibility conditions and slow-running Slopestyle Park.

The decision was made to run the competition as quick as possible by narrowing it down to a two-run format instead of the usual three-run format.

The resort’s Kapoko Park course included five platforms that featured a host of rails, boxes and kickers offering a fun course that allowed competitors to progress through their runs.

Judges took style, technicality and use of course into account when awarding points.

Consistency was the key to the weather conditions and riders that were able to put down solid runs while making use of all the features in the park scored the podium places.

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In the premier pro men’s division, Andrew le Roux made his return to competing at Winter Whip and took a convincing victory.

His runs consisted of a switch nose boardslide, switch front 270 on the flat to down, boardslide over the rainbow and hardway front 360 saw Le Roux score the highest points of the competition.

Wesley Schallen went all in attempting a 50-50 to frontflip off the tanker feature in his first run, unfortunately going down, but back-to-back backflips off the kickers in his second run secured him the second place finish.

Japan’s Shotaro Koyama, who finished in third place in the last Winter Whip competition, retained his third place title with solid scoring runs through the park.

Mawa Jekot was also back to competition in the Women’s division and although dealing with flu, managed to secure the overall win with her runs featuring a lip slide, nose slide over the rainbow and stylish method air over the kicker.

Bronwyn Rassmann went down early in her runs but pieced together the rest of the course to finish in second place.

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Paige Verpoort, in her first ever Slopestyle contest, rounded off the podium in third.

The biggest field of the day was in the open men’s division which saw a closely fought battle for the podium.

In the end it was Nick Brodie and his 720 on the butter box, tailgrab and method that took the win over England’s Meka Ejindu and defending title holder Dean Cowley who finished in second and third respectively.

The event also saw participation by a strong contingency of local Lesotho skiers competing in both the Ski and Junior Ski divisions.

The ski division was again dominated by Linze Veentsra, aka JTK, who’s stylish riding on the rails and back-to-back backflips on the kickers took the win.

Veenstra’s switch backflip in his second run also secured him the best trick of the competition and awarded a GoPro Max.

USA’s Gillean Szwedamittels slotted into second place with Kabai Mokolo taking home third.

In the junior ski division, it was Sekholo Ramonotsi who took the win from Thabang Mabari in second and Tumade Ramabanta in third.

Sekholo Ramonotsi also competed in the junior snowboard division taking the win.

“It was so good to be back at Afriski and what an amazing experience with the amount of snowfall we had.

“We’re stoked to have been able to run the Slopestyle competition in the conditions we were dealt and it worked out in a fun-filled four days,” said event organiser, Ryan van der Spuy.

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