19./20. August 2006

Friday noon. The weather prediction for the weekend didn't look that good. Nevertheless Chris and I decided to go cause I wouldn't wanna miss the race! I met Chris at his atelier. Work is done - we're ready to go. What's on the way to Italy. Right! The bowl in Lugano. We stopped there and rode the bowl for an hour or two. With a big smile on the face we continued the journey. Somewhere after Torino it started raining. Late at night we arrived on the pass and it was still raining. And it didn't stop until next morning. But then the wind blew away the rainy clouds. It dried quickly!

Col d'Izoard is such a nice road. I was there a few years ago on a downhill skateboard road trip. So I already knew the road a little bit. It's one of these places where you need to go back. The race course starts right on top of the pass, at the bottom end of the picture. It's almost 2km long and has an average inclination of 12%. The road is a part of the Tour de France. Due to this the tar is really good. If i'm not mistaken the road was repaved in 2004. All right hand corners are actually the same. They're tight and the exit is flat. Footbraking isn't necessary but definitely faster. The left handers are bigger corners. Footbraking is necessary only for the first left hand corner. It's not such a fast course but nevertheless very interesting. I didn't ride in the wet. So I only had one and a half practise runs. I was riding 76mm flywheels 81A - again! After lunch we started with the timetrials. I won the first round and improved my time by 2sec in the second run. After the timetrials Chris and I carved down the hill a few kilometers. We got a lift back up to the top with Spiderman. It was so much fun so we carved down again later in the evening. The party sucked and that round thing with tomato and mozzarella we ate was rather a soup than a pizza. Claude the skullboarder gave us a lift back to the top and we went to bed. The stars came out and it was cold. Sunday morning was really nice weather. But it was still relatively cold. Since the skateboard race was scheduled for afternoon Chris and I went for a walk. We hiked up to a nice peak. The trail was steep and straight up. I wished having my mountainbike with me. Would be a challenge to ride down this gnarly trail. After lunch we got one warmup and the race started. I had good runs and always won with a big lead.

In the final Adrien overtook me on the inside of the first corner. He slid - I didn't! So I passed him directly after the corner. On my green wheels I was definitely coming out of the corners much faster. I won the final with a safe 20m lead. Adrien and Jibo were fighting hard. Side by side they passed the finish line not knowing who made second and third. I'm really happy and proud winning this race. It's been a big pleasure riding on the closed road of Col' d'Izoard. Everybody who didn't come missed a very nice race and a beautiful weekend in the mountains!

1st Martin Siegrist - CH - Airflow Skateboards, Globe Shoes, Abec11, Beat Engel, IXS, Magun
2nd Adrien Barat - F - SC8
3rd Jibo Debure

Pictures by Airflow, Didier, William and Nino. Thanks alot!