By Grace Arneberg
Red Bull Crashed Ice is an ice cross downhill, or downhill skating, event that travels around the world. This year it was held in Helsinki, St. Paul, Minn., Moscow and Quebec City. University of Wisconsin–Stout junior Cole Meyer qualified as an athlete for the event, which took place from Feb. 20 to 22 in St. Paul.
This was Meyer’s first year with hopefully many more to come.
“Over winter break I got an email about RBCI having a wild card video submission this year,” said Meyer. “My brother and I both thought of making a course in our backyard right away to set us apart from the others and to have somewhere to train.”
The homemade course in Buffalo, Minn. took a little more than a week to complete. Their backyard allowed for perfect tight turns, moguls, steep hills and a big jump. This helped tremendously with practicing and building stamina.
“My experience at the event was awesome,” said Meyer. “Red Bull along with Six Speed did a great job of putting it on and making sure the athletes had everything we needed.”
Rain, sleet and snow made the conditions less than desirable on one of the days.
“Crew members did an awesome job shoveling and scraping it off to keep the competition going,” said Meyer.
After the first practice run, Meyer finished 37 out of 100 with a time of 39.75 seconds.
“I felt pretty good about it and wanted to get faster to make it into the top 32,” said Meyer. Unfortunately, during the second run he hit a bad piece of ice and fell after one of the jumps, dropping down to 47th place.
Meyer also participated in a team event where his team finished 26 out of 41. Although the team didn’t advance in the competition, Meyer stated that it was a lot of fun being on the big screen and under the lights at night.
“Overall, the whole weekend was a blast, and I will be training even harder to hopefully get back into it and do better next year,” said Meyer. “I might even have to make our homemade course bigger and better for next year. I can’t wait.
For more information about Red Bull Crashed Ice, visit http://www.redbullcrashedice.com/en_US