Five months ago, Amplid opened its doors to the first intake of young talented riders to the Amplid Ambush Academy. The aim of the Academy was to find riders that were not only skilled skiers and snowboarders but also media savvy; able to produce edits and promote themselves through social media. Amplid’s partner in the Academy, GoPro kindly provided Hero 2 cameras for all of the riders meaning that riders of all backgrounds were able to be a part of the program and work to becoming Amplid’s next team rider. The fifth and final challenge set by Amplid’s co-founder/CEO Peter Bauer was to produce a season edit using footage filmed for the previous challenges and over the season and promote it on the internet. This challenge gave riders with riding skills, a good work ethic and a drive to succeed the opportunity to shine.
SNOWBOARDERS
The Cartel team’s favourite video was Markus Haka’s urban heavy edit; highlights were the FS3 off the toes in to a quarry and a crazy roof-top wall-ride transfer all done with untouchable style. Markus’ edit was followed closely by Mr Roman Kristl who is one seriously smooth operator. Effortless park skills that transfer to Big Mountain riding is what Roman’s video captured; this was John Rodosky’s favourite edit link here. The Cartel’s third favourite edit was Daniel Diedrich’s countryside urban edit. From gnarly pool transfers to a crazy kid’s slide ride this edit was creative and gnarly in places.
However, the edit was only half of the points. Peter asked you to promote your videos to get as many views as possible. Charlie Rowland did a great job of promoting his season edit by creating a “How to do a double cork 10, and how not to” article for Whitelines magazine and getting a post of his video at the end of the article link here. Charlie achieved over 1800 views making his video the second most viewed. More than doubling Charlie’s views was Daniel Diedrich’s video. Daniel worked really hard to post his video, getting posts on the Catfish Chronicles and Snowstoked and cashing- in favours to get Ethan Morgan to post it on his webisode site. Daniel’s video was also featured by Mpora Magazine. Altogether Daniel got over 4000 views of his season edit. Combining the edit quality and total views scores the top five were as follows:
1. Daniel Diedrich
2. Roman Kristl
3. Timmy Tausig
4. Markus Haka
5. Charlie Rowland
SKIERS
The Scandinavia Vs. USA battle continued in the 5th challenge. Amplid’s Cartel team couldn’t decide between Simen AG and Tanner Boudreau’s edit which both blew minds. Team rider McRae Williams had three favourites but it was Tanner’s riding that stood out for him “Sveinung Jacobsen, Tanner Boudreau, and Simen Aarseth Gjelsvik really stood out, especially Tanner. Tanner has tricks both ways, he’s very technical, and he has a unique style that grew on me my second time watching. I think his is the best.” Praise indeed from the man who just won European XGames gold! So Tanner and Simen AG’s vids were tied at the top closely followed by Sveinung Jacobsen (link here) and the smoothest and only Swede in the Academy Olov Engstrom. Also a big shout to Eirik Moberg for some sweet nose butter 9s (link here).
The skiers did a much better job of promoting their videos than the snowboarders achieving over twice as many views combined, but that meant that the competition for the most views was serious. Tanner, Simen AG and the German Freeride machine Bernhard Braun (link here) all managed to get their views up to the 2000 mark… I’m starting to wonder if there is a cliff that Börnie can’t drop! American/Swiss young gun Alex Hall proved that at 14 years old his skills are still at the level of the best skiers on the program with incredible Park City shredding (link here). Alex also did a great job of promoting his video, bringing in over 3400 views which made him the second most viewed rider. At the top spot with the most views was Olov Engstrom who managed to get featured on Downdays and on a local Swedish site which bagged him almost 5500 views on Vimeo alone. Here are the top 5 skiers:
1. Olov Engstrom
2. Tanner Boudreau
3. Simen Aarseth Gjelsvik
4. Alex Hall
5. Carson Kerr
Congratulations to everybody who took part, the standard was incredible. And if you’re reading this, watch out for the names you see in this article, there was some red hot talent in the Academy this year! An lastly a huge thank you to GoPro for supplying the Academy riders with cameras and mounts, the Academy wouldn’t have been possible without you!
