This year is the first one in which we gained a top position in the Total Fight Masters of Freestyle snowboard competitions, said Marc Bajona Carrera, Head of Rider’s Organisation

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Marc Bajona Carrera, Head of Rider’s Organisation, tells All Andorra about the results of the Total Fight Masters of freestyle 2016 in Andorra:

“Total Fight Masters of Freestyle began approximately 12 years ago. It is not a FIS competition, so skiers as well as snowboarders can compete. When we began we were one of the first hosts of a freestyle competition in Europe. It’s a very unique contest.

Andorra hosts a lot of freestyle competitions. At the beginning we started by having some national competitions, but now they have grown, and Total Fight was one which grew to an international level.

Total Fight Masters of Freestyle was created in order to promote Grandvalira and in particular its snow park in El Tarter (where both competitions took place). Total Fight Masters of Freestyle is a partnership project with Grandvalira’s shareholder ENSISA. The ski competition always takes place in Andorra and always in El Tarter’s snow park.

It’s quite important to add, that we are part of the World Snowboard Tour, which has grown into the strongest international snowboarding tour representing the most important snowboard events in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania. We started with 3 stars (the number of stars depends on the athletes’ qualifications), but now we are in a leading position (with 6 stars). We are very proud of what we have achieved, but the problem is that our budget is restricting us. As you can imagine, it takes a lot to organise this kind of event. International events such as these generally cost around 2 million euros. For us it’s like two hundred and fifty thousand euros.

This year is the first year in which we gained a top position in the snowboard competitions. It means we can attract the best riders from all over the world. There are a lot of categories – slope style, half pipe, big air for men and for women… We only have a slope style for men and this year we had to limit the number of competitors to only 40 snowboarders. We have a lot of guys from the US, Canada, Austria, Finland, Norway and France.

In free skiing we have only reached gold level – one step below the top level. But I would say it’s almost the same because we also had the best free skiers from all over the world. The number of competitors was similar – 40 skiers.

Looking at the results from this year, the best snowboarder was 21 year-old Max Parrot from Canada (he got a score of 89.33) and won $16000. In second place was 24 year-old Seppe Smits from Belgium (who scored 87.66), he won $12000. Moritz Thoenen from Switzerland took third place (scoring 85.33) and won $8000.

The best free skier was 18 year-old Andri Ragettli from Switzerland (scoring 92.33) winning $8000. In second place was 22 year-old Jesper Tjader from Sweden (with a score of 91.00), he won $6000. Third place was taken by 19 year-old Fabian Bösch from Switzerland (with a score of 90.00) who won $3000″.

Silvia Monet

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