AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE, oi, oi, oi!

Today we took the long trek to Cyprus Mountain the site for the Vancouver Olympics, Women’s Half Pipe event.

It was quite a trip. First a 90 minute car ride to the transport hub at Simon Fraser University in the suburbs of Vancouver. You can only catch Olympic buses to the events at the Vancouver games and busses had been bought in from all over Canada and the USA to transport spectators to Olympic venues.


After being dropped off by the bus we had a hike and a half to the security checkpoint. Here we faced a bit of a bottleneck but it wasn’t too bad and once through security we had another long hike to the stands and then a climb up a mountain of stairs to our seats in the huge temporary stand.

My first impression of the half pipe was that it looks so much smaller on TV. The pipe is around 140 meters in length and it is steep. It certainly takes a lot of grit, guts and determination to launch yourself down these slopes at breakneck pace and then perform your bag of tricks.

Torah Bright the Australian was the first competitor and she posted a good score to start the day. Even though it is the Winter Olympics we were quickly pulling off layers of clothing as the sun shone brightly and it was 12c. Many of the spectators watched the events bare-chested.

It was a real united nations up in the stands and every competitor had their fans. Of course the biggest cheer went up for the Canadian’s and there were also plenty of American’s about the place. As at any sporting event anywhere in the world there were Aussies aplenty, most draped with a flag or a boxing kangaroo.


There were 30 competitors at the start of the event and the top six went straight to the final. Positions seven to eighteen went through to the semi final, which was held two hours after the initial qualifying. During the practice session between events a French competitor had a very bad spill and was carried out of the pipe on a stretcher.


The first six women from the semi final progressed to the final. The pressure was on and there were spills galore. Each competitor had two runs to post the required score.

Finally there were 12 competitors left to take part in the final. Australia had two women through whilst the USA had four. Torah Bright the Australian had the top score in qualifying so she went last on the first run. Torah started her run off well but struck trouble at the midway point and bombed out badly to finish last on the first run.


The crowd was really into the event now. The lights added a new dimension to the half pipe and each competitor was cheered on by the large crowd.

In the second run Torah went first as the last placed qualifier. The pressure was on her to put in a good performance, and did she what! She scored 45.00 points which placed the pressure back onto the other competitors who now had to chase her for gold and many crashed in that pursuit.


Finally it came down to the last competitor, an American she had a score of 42.4 and she would have to score more than 45.00 points to win the gold. She couldn’t do it.

Gold to Australia! The crowd did go wild as everyone acknowledged that it was a brave performance worthy of a gold medal.


It was a great event with lots of great snowboarding, intermingled with fantastic crashes and wild tricks. The weather, crowd and venue was fantastic. And who could ask for a better result?