Gold for Rocco worldcup Bigair Denver

Rocco van Straten has caused a totally unexpected surprise at the LG Snowboard FIS World Cup host debut of Denver, Colorado. The Dutch rider secured the first ever win for his home country in the big air discipline thus claiming his chapter in the World Cup history books. With a total score of 53.0 points the 19-years-old kid edged off 2011 World Championships runner-up and Big Air Word Cup novice Zachary Stone of Canada (50.8) to the second rank. Michael Macho (AUT, 48.5) rounded out the podium as third thus securing his career’s best result so far.

After this historical triumph, Rocco van Straten, a Junior World Champion in both, lift and cable wakeboarding, was absolutely astonished. “I’m super happy. To be honest, I don’t know what to say. But one thing is for sure: this is the best moment in my whole life so far.”

However, the victory in the first big air competition on US-American soil after seven years (Mt. Bachelor, OR, 2004) wasn’t his first trick in the last weeks. Van Straten had also surprised at the last World Championships in Spain by placing fourth. “That definitely gave me a push although I had to fight the jetlag today. And then I end up first. I didn’t expect anything like this, but I was hoping for a top-5 result.”

The Dutchman sat in fifth after the first two jumps (of which the better one counts) having earned 25.1 points for his cab 900. In the decisive third run, he stomped a huge backside 1080 thus logging in another 27.9 points and also raising the bar for the four guys still to come. None of them had something in store to set against except of Michael Macho, who was the only one landing his trick in the sweet spot. You won see it, go to this website http://www.fissnowboard.com/uk/videos/race-video.html and run start at 2.45.

Dutch TV sportnews
http://nos.nl/video/popup/214635-van-straten-wint-big-air-in-denver.html