Results From The 4th Annual BEST SuperFly Open at Park City, UT
See more photos at https://www.bestkiteboarding.com/Superfly-2011-Results
The 4th Annual BEST SuperFly Open had some epic conditions over the President’s Day weekend with rider participation coming from all over the world to showcase their skills. The event was located in new venue this year, Strawberry Reservoir, UT. With no wind the first day and a white out on Saturday which amounted to over 2 ft. of fresh powder, we anticipated the wind to make an appearance on Sunday.
Saturday night we had a school bus pick us up for the Wookie’s Wild Roundup Pub Crawl into Park City, UT. The blizzard made what was to be a 20 minute ride and hour and half but we were entertained with spirits, Best Tattoo contest and wild Wookie call contests through the night. Unfortunately due to the bad weather we had to call the pub crawl short and get back on the bus so that we didn’t get stuck in Park City for the night but we all had a fun time.
On Sunday the 20th, we woke up to a light snowfall but knew the sun would push through with blue skies and plenty of wind. We had no disappointment and the wind showed up midday with riders ready to rock!
We started out with some short course racing starting with the Men’s Pro Ski division. The sky was filled with multitude of colors as the kiters raced across the terrain for the first flag and then made their way up the hill to round the second and make a downhill plunge for the finish line. Next on deck were the Men’s Pro Snowboarders, Amateur Men’s Ski and Snowboarders and Women’s combined and they each had 2 chances to show whose skills would bring them to the finish line first.
Next the rails were aligned and the Freestyle divisions were held. Best had some freshly painted sliders that made for great photo ops. There were 2 different sliders, a kicker, a spine and lots of fresh snow for riders to throw down and make their impressions for the judges. The wind started to get light after we held the 4 heats of Men’s Pro and ended up having to call it due to subpar conditions.
We had over 100 people show up for trainer kite clinics over the weekend. It was great to see such a high interest of skiers and snowboarders that want to bring their skills to the next level and give kiting a try. Sunday’s clinic had the wind so there were a lot of excited people ready to book their next lesson and move on to bigger kites. We highly believe that the future of the growth of snow kiting is going to come from cross over athletes and this was confirmed through running the clinics.
The awards ceremony was held on Sunday night as we crowned the winners and had a great raffle giving out over $10,000 in prizes and cash purse. We had awesome swag from our sponsors Dakine, Skullcandy, Zeal Optics, G4G, Ogden Rox, Zu Audio and BEST Kiteboarding. Artist Son Duong made with Skullcandy was on site painting once again this year wowing the crowd with his talent. Son also designed our event tshirt this year!
We hoped for some wind on Monday thinking we would be able to start where we finished but the blue skies made for some beautiful scenery and wind gods did not cooperate. BEST would like to thank all those who traveled far to make it to our event, all the way from Russia, Aruba, Austria, France, Canada and Puerto Rico! It is great to see kiteboarders unite for the growth of our sport and making bigger and better events for the future of the NAST tour.
RESULTS:
Pro Ski Race
1. #5 Jon McCabe
2. #55 Ken Lucas
TIE#54 Tyler Brown
TIE#60 Sean Haag
5. #44 Luke Orton
6. #46 Daryl Drown
7. #42 Chris Nester
Pro Board
1. #53 Billy Bordy
2. #43 Jacob Buzianis
3. #8 Juan Carlos
4. #51 Aaron Sales
5. #49 Matt Thames
6. #50 Ryan Allen
7. #1 Oliver Palmers
8. #52 Tom Hoskins
9. #45 Cole Russell
10. #3 Sam Medysky (DNF)
Am Men Ski
1. #39 Mark Johnson
2. #25 Bob Legault
3. #34 Ravil Muslyumov
4. #30 Derek Brown
Am Men Board
1. #23 Joaquin Hubbard
Womens Ski & Snowboard
1. #65 Jen Milton
2. #62 Melissa Cronin
3. #63 Trisha Smith
4. #68 Francis Cronin
5. Victoria Stevens
Freestyle Pro Ski
1. #44 Luke Orton
2. #54 Tyler Brown
3. #5 Jon McCabe
4. #55 Ken Lucas
5. #42 Chris Nester
Freestyle Pro Board
1. #49 Matt Thames
2. #51 Aaron Sales
3. #3 Sam Medysky
4. #1 Oliver Palmers
5. #43 Jacob Buzianis
6. #53 Billy Bordy
7. #52 Tom Hoskins
8. #9 Matt Sexton
9. #8 Juan Carlos