felix

don't know. Just drop them an e-mail. However even in Austria it is very hard to get them (only go their - I don't know why they don't sell them - can't imagine it is because of their image - in that case they could have changed the name of the boards). In fact apart from the group of racers on Elans I once met I only met one single other time someone who was one a "recent" elan raceboard. Maybe those boards are sold branded for another niche-company and therefore they don't want to sell them to the public? For me this season is wasted cause of injuries. Otherwise I would 1. try out the new SigiGrabner board in Turrachherhöhe and then try some elans plus give some tomahawks a try plus the Swoard.

Oh and directly at the company you can still buy a wide assortement of raceboards from Elan (and allways could). They don't feature an Elan Topsheet though.

Nope F2 is only subcontracting. Boards & More has no own company. If you want I can research again on snowboard-community.de about the producing company of their softboards (including Eliminator LTD and probabely their freecarving boards) - someone from that community once even worked for that company. It is I think after Elan the second biggest board producer in Austria. However it is for sure that their Speedsters and Silberpfeil don't originate in that company. It's true that the quality sind DUOCAP isn't that bad anymore. Their old Caps didn't even make like 20 days for me (softboards - my old Cap Speedster still holds up) as I allways ripped the cap of (maybee due to some Proflex Wordcup Boardercross bindings that have a baseplate which is a bit crazy and very hard) You are right that F2 designs other boards as well (previously Duotone, still Never Summer (though not produced in Austria) and Forum (still?)

Well Elan Austria is the biggest snowboard producer of the world (nearly 20% market share). Nevertheless they know how to build good boards. Some Austrians like SigiGrabner let Elan manufacture their boards. Elan Raceboards (unbranded - simply plain topsheet) are available directly at the factory for cheap prices and seem to have great performance. I met a group of racers 2 month ago on the mountain who were absolutely rippin on their elan raceboards in length around 185. They said that those boards are quite popular on the EC races. Rumors say that Elan Austria also produces all F2 raceboards since years (however why would Elan produce such crappy boards?). F2 Softboards are produced by GS sports (or maybe I got it wrong - the factory is near the boarder to Germany in Austria however for sure)

Hey I would love to see that in Austria too. Good format. Here I have the eastcup (only like 5-6 races a year) with a very bad level and not much fun. Next step up is already FIS races with all that blody expensive insurance so if you don't race at least like 10 races for the season it's not even worth thinking much about it. Something like your "flegmatic racing" sounds fun.

Hey, thats great that you enjoy the Tomahawks. I am still fearing the step up from my 17X GS board to a full 184/5 cm GS board. During the last weeks Dieter Krassnig and some others have sold off their 185 and 184cm Tomahawks on ebay Austria (10 races in use, waxed like 30 times, normally went for around 200-300€) I just feel unsecure buying a board from a worldcup pro who weighs 20 kg more than me (65 vs 85kg) as DK1 switched to Virus. Harald Walder is selling of his 184 Rossignols that were produced like 2-3 years ago before he switched to Tomahawk. He still races on Tomahawk because he says Kessler only provides him with ****ty quality. For Austrians the only way to score good Kessler boards seems to buy them from Swiss racers.

I usually wax the night before. Leave the wax on. Next morning I reheat it and hotscrape. Then I put on a temp specific wax from Toko or Holmenkol Racing series. Sometimes even a low-fluor. Before each run if there is time and a serviceman available I hand in my board for a quick hotwax with that powder stuff (at FIS-races). Otherwise like every second run I put on some rubon stuff. Don't know if it helps that much - at least it clears up my mind and makes me mentally fit for the race. If I'm too slow at least I know it hasn't been the wax.

Well selling that would be unfair. I got the tip from Gittie Köck, a worldcup snowboarder. It works great. I just wax my board, don't scrape and put it out in the sun. When I put it back in I can see that a lot of the wax has been soaked in already. Sometimes it even resolves the need for scraping:biggthump Must admit that my veranda lies very neatly in the sun. It heats up to 60°Celsius in Summer when the air has 30°Celsius. The black base of the board might even become hotter.

I just put my boards on my veranda in the sun. That is a very good hotbox from March to beginning of November.

I do ski a lot too. On that very icy days my slalom race stock skis are just a blast. I'm scoring quite good times in the gates too though I stopped skiing when I was 7 and just started up again. Basically its the same technique. I'm only wondering if skiing hurts my snowboarch technique. Nonetheless I love to pack out some proper 185cm Giant Slalom skis too occassionally. Once I've tried a SuperG 205cm Atomic. That ski was a blast but too much for me in the course. I have never felt so much fear on hardpack before than blasting through a jump with 100+ km/h, a speed not achievable on snowboards savely. On good days I absolutely prefer to board. On Pow days too. Can't get much excitemenent out of powder skis. I'm really looking forward to get my ski plug boots because I allways boot out. At the moment I think I will get an Atomic Race Tech Ti or an Diablo Race Pro. Trying to get the boot with the fewest overhang. I'm sure pretty much every good raceboarder can rip on skis in 1 hour, even if he has never skied before. Just hand him some slalom race department skis, tune them as aggressive as possible, go on some really icy hardpack, very steep it should be too, and let him carve it down. Skiing is so easy! (There is a rumor in Austria that Alexander Maier beat his brother last year in a training slalom (the infamous Herminator) - he said he might start skiing because snowboarding is too hard and he is not very successful at the moment in the worldcup). However because skiing is so easy I prefer carving on one board. Skiing fun wears out quick.

who coached you? 500€ per day is allright assuming you divide it by 21 it is indeed very cheap if they on top provide the material (gates....) and reserve the slopes. Normal price for race clinics in Austria is around 50-70€ per day. Including the setting up of gates and videoanalysis with around 2-3 coaches. 2 helpers and 30-40 participants. But those race-clinics are pretty much only offered for skiing.

Uh - you went to an blue-tomato race camp. I didn't hear much good about their camps during the last couple of years. Sometimes they didn't get together enough people and would sent you to a lactat (=styrian snowboard team) training session (if you were lucky I think). Knowing that simply asking Werner Ebenbauer from lactat to participate and he always said yes (I am from Lower Austria so wasn't allowed to officialy join lactat - only for Styrians) and didn't want any money but was happy about some more racers or boardercrossers (like me back 3-4 years when I often trained with them) didn't do anything good to the image of BT race clinics. How many people were you? Did they do a lot of videocoaching? Which slope where you on (Planai or Dachstein as Mountain I suppose). I am glad for you anyhow that you enjoyed it. Next time drop a mail to Werner and ask him when he does his trainings and if you are allowed to participate. That would save you big bucks!

I like them and use them myself. At 65-70 kg I am lightweight however. I love the flexibility they are giving me. Never broke. If you on the other hand prefer a super stiff setup they are nonsens.

Yip, Krassnig races on 22cm wide Virus Raceboards using snow pro binders and Dee Luxe boots. Last year he was on a Tomahawk. Many Boardercrosser (like the F2 BX team) were forced by their sponsors to switch to soft boots. I can tell you that they didn't like it. I would say on the Worldcup its 50/50. Those on a soft setup however all race on custom built boards which are way stiffer than what you can get in the stores. Tomahawk is building quite a lot of soft boards for BX events. BTW: Sigi Grabners seems to be building up a small team all using his own boards. This went so far that Karl Benjamin beat him in the last EC PGS in Haus on one of "his boards".

Well I was fastest on my 172 Speedster (the last grey model, which was too stiff for most people) with hardboots. Especially if there were big jumps (like 20-30m - not like the 50-60m Giant jump they did set up in the Saas Fee BX world cup this year - but shaped it off after about 10 WC riders got seriously harmed). Especially if there is one course for BX and skiercross take a real 185 GS Board because the skiers use GS race Skis with 21-25m radius. Only in smaller and very tight courses I have used my soft Setup. But be aware. I would allways use binders with fixed highbacks and a custom made 3. strap on top in order not to ruin my ACL (crashed my ACL on one day where I though I could do without my 3. strap). For soft boards try to get a really hard soft board with even harder Tail with say a 10-11m radius, 25cm waist and around 165cm. (based on my weight of 70kg with 265 Mondo bootsize). I prefer landing on my hardboots as they give me more security and response.

Well guys - its time for clearing this up. The factory is www.spezialski.de The indigo Brand is actually the bogner brand. However are they only doing the marketing trick. All skis they sell have been developped by www.snowrider.at or namely Reini Fischer. The inventor of the modern carving ski (in 1985 - former ÖSV head coach for technical disciplines I believe). Their skis absolutely rock and are ridden by some unsponsored Europe Cup Riders. Spezialski is the website of VR (Voigt) skis - the former race ski producer for the Soviet Union and one of the big cats in ski-jumping skis. The skis branded with the snowrider logo cost around 500€ including the VIST Worldcup Race Alu Plate and Vist Race Stock binders. Or 360€ skis only. I am using a pair of their slalom skis and have never been on any better Race Department (meaning the real deal - unavailable in stores) Slalom skis. They practically ski like my snowboard carves. However Spezialski also sell Titanal-Raceboard which are AFAIK know as well used in the Worldcup by some riders. Its not Kessler but Spezialski who in 2000 builded the first raceboards using Titanal from the Austria nTitanal-Sports company. (so before Kessler). Those boards are available on mail order, but I haven't tried them (yet). The Bamboo is only a tiny bit and has nothing to do with the great performance. The core is Ash-Wood of very high quality. Quite a lot of other companies take over the original Snowriders (they already in 1995 had a 12m Sidecut, 80mm Underfoot in165cm). If you want to have the skis with custom topsheet order via www.edelwiser.com

In the thread sole length - people began starting to write down eagerly their sole length. Therefore I would like to post here the idea we had at extremecarving.com (By Arnauld and me). http://www.extremecarving.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1749&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 So if you want to help us set up the database (we need more data!!!!) - simply give us the data of your feet and your shoes by posting here (I will then copy it over in some weeks or give Arnauld who is setting up the database the link here) or posting in the original thread at extremecarving. Well just to explain you the idea of our boot sole comparison: We want to have a database which shows the actual boot length in comparison with the length of the feet. Ultimately there should be a database where one can lookup which shoe is the shortest for a given foot length. (As there are major differences in between the different producers and based on the fact that there allways is on shell for many liners!) Therefore we adapted to write down the following measures: Please write down the following 1 - Brand / model and model year 2 - Size in Mondo or equivalent 3 - Total length of the outerboot/shell (using the same measurement technique as provided by Arnaud) i.e. 364mm 4. Total length of feet. (in case one foot is bigger write down the longer one) 5. Length in mm marked normally on the heels of the boot for adjusting the bindings i.e. 333mm = the sole length or if not written please measure it too To 3 and 5 - Just as example:

totally sick. Remembers me of Snakeboards from the riding technique and carving seems to be nice too.

Hey thats something really cool. I would love to testride a tomahawk. They seem the best priced quality custom raceboards out there to me. (maybe excluding Elan which I want to give a try too but they are as hard to come by as the tomahawks) BTW: Harald Walder and his brother are still on Tomahawk in the worldcup. According to him Kessler does not provide their best quality to non Swiss Worldcup riders and therefore he didn't change as so many others did.

There is even a 3-Strap binding from Proflex used by the French F2 Boardercrossteam and by some others. It is however pretty custom too. However it seems that with the new Virus Boardercross there might be something new starting up. Lukas Gruener won directly his first race with the new equipment. Not much public about the board though.

Hi, whats your input on using these for Bordercross. In Europe most people either use a Powerstrap as 3. Strap or use some custom tongues to stiffen up the boot in order not to ruin the knees whem flatting out. I just think it is unfair to say that 3-strap bindings have no sense. 1. Hardboots suck with low angles, so riding a Soft Boardercrossboard with hardboots, I can not work it properly. However using a powerstrap setup on softies I can actually preserve good FS performance while still having the pros from Softies with low angles. Maybee an original booster strap would be even better instead of such a hard 3. strap? As well it's no bad option for heavy snow in the backcountry, i.e. having top conditions at the top but really sticky and heavy untracked snow at the bottom. It is as well highly customizable, I use powerstrap only on rear foot except when Boardercrossing. For BigAir a stiff tongue seems more promising. BTW: I started snowboarding long long ago on a hardboot setup. Raichle 123's it was if I remember correctly. But then switched over for 3 years to softies directly afterwards in order to be cool. However since many ears I do both again. Learning on an unforgiving racboard was a great think. I had to adapt proper technique from the first minute.