Josh Bibby, TJ Schiller stomp the WSI

They're at it again.

A view of the Rail Session terrain at the 2004 WSI, Whistler BC

Once again, those two troublemakers have been up to no good - this time participating in the Whistler Ski Invitational, one of the events at a ski-and-snowboard festival held at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort on the coast of BC. I was there to watch the events, take pictures and join in the celebratory consumption of beer following shortly thereafter.

The three events for the WSI included the Rail Session, a "Superpipe" (half-pipe) comp and of course, Big Air. Both guys pulled some amazing stunts in the Big Air comp, arguably their area of expertise.

The results are as follows:

Rail Session: 3rd (Josh), 5th (TJ)
Superpipe.. : 20th, 4th
Big Air.... : 4th, 3rd

Video clips

A view of the Big Air terrain at the 2004 WSI, Whistler BC

These were taken from a digital camera, so the quality is pretty bad - but you can get an idea of the height of the jump as well as hear the commentary. DivX 5 is required.

Check the related links section for more (and better, I might add!) pictures and video.

Big Air = Big Crowd

There was a good crowd of several thousand (10,000 I heard?) people out for the Big Air event, which attracted the most attention. Some very talented skiers showed off their stuff, but the last four were narrowed down to Josh against Simon Dumont, and TJ against Jon (pronounced "Yoon") Olssen.

TJ and Josh won their first heats against the other guys, but then lost the next two (the first to get two points won, continuing to the next round). It was then Josh vs. TJ for 3rd place, and TJ ended up winning. Despite my brotherly bias, I was silenty wishing Josh would've taken third. Though he didn't beat TJ, I think it was a very close call.

At the time of writing (the week after the WSI,) these guys have left for the US to compete in the Orage Masters - where someone will be taking home a snowmobile for first place, apparently.

Related links