All Girls At Cardrona

All Girls At Cardrona

The sisters were on form today at Cardrona for the Nikita Pipe Session, a girls-only training camp with top international coaches.

Cristel Thoresen.

Top European rider, Cristel Thoresen flew in from Norway to coach the camp, joined by current New Zealand national champion Juliane Bray and World Cup rider, Crispin Lipscomb. Thoresen is former junior world half pipe champion and Olympian, representing Norway as a 17-year-old in 1998. She rode the World Cup Circuit for five years before withdrawing to focus on filming and photoshoots.

Nikita Clothing.

Girls from throughout New Zealand as well as Australia, Canada and the UK benefited from their expert advice. Although many of them had never ridden a pipe before they took this opportunity to learn from the best.

“I’m real excited to get some knowledge from these guys,” said Jane Bowdon from Christchurch. “I’ve always been keen to get some pipe coaching but there aren’t many opportunities around so this is just perfect. It’s great to be able to ride and learn without worrying about some guy dropping in on you or intimidating you. Even though the coaches are awesome riders, they’re so down to earth and make you feel really comfortable.”

Juliane Bray said it was exciting to get people into the pipe for the first time. “Most of these girls can snowboard well, they just haven’t had the opportunity to get in the pipe. An all-girls camp works really well, you build up a good relationship with them. Just the distance some people have travelled to get here shows how much demand there is for this kind of thing.”

Eddie Spearing of Nikita Clothing said he was delighted with the sell-out event.

“Camps like this bring a focus to women’s snowboarding. It’s an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the sports’ best. Last year we put on one camp, this year we’ve extended it to three with different coaches for each ability. As well as the pipe at Cardrona, girls can learn to freeride at Ohau or freestyle at Turoa.”

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