Crepel takes two at Arosa
French snowboarder Mathieu Crepel began his weekend on Friday by narrowly netting the gold in the Big Air competition. He beat last years champion Antti Autti from Finland(shown below) by a slim margin in a very exciting final. Twenty-two year old Crepel secured the gold by landing a “Switch Backside 1260″, a trick he had never landed in a competition before.
Another Fin, Janne Korpi finished third in the Big Air.
The weekend continued to get better for the Frenchman, on Saturday he captured gold again in the Halfpipe. Crepel didn’t expect a high finish, not having ridden the halfpipe at all between the Olympics and January. He was just able to squeeze past Japanese snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo by one-tenth of a point.
Canadian Brad Martin finished up with the bronze, with Autti and Korpi finishing with fine weekends as well , not medaling in the halfpipe but finishing a very respectable 4th and fifth.
Unfortunately the American men were shut out as far as medals are concerned in the final two events of the Championships.
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