Nine Knights’09, presented by Almdudler is over!  A stoked bunch of skiers, filmers and photographers left Oberstdorf in Germany on Sunday with big smiles on their faces, and a load of crazy memories from a great week that has been filled from begining to end with Bavarian banter, throw-down skiing, dazzling imagery, and medieval-style partying…messy!

 
Nico Zacek and Tobi Reindl getting all Bavarian (Photo courtesy of www.stefcande.com)

After sessioning the perfectly shaped castle for two days at both sunrise and sunset,  riders and media were pretty happy with what they’d got in the can, and so with a couple of days of mixed weather everyone found time to chill out, party, edit their shots, or play football in preparation for comp day on Saturday. Sadly there’d be no participation from two of the Knights, as Paddy Graham (UK) and Oscar Sherlin (SWE) had been injured in battle!

Crill attempts to nurse Oscar back to life…we had suspicions that the illness was drink induced…hmmm (picture courtesy of www.stefcande.com)

                                check out some action form the first two shooting days
                               http://mpora.com/videos/50CgLMMN7
                                          More Freeskiing >>

As competing photographer, I of course got stuck into….errrrr partying…and a bit of editing, so here is what i came up for the of  best Action/Black and White/Creative Angle/Lifestyle/

ACTION

 BLACK/WHITE

 
CREATIVE ANGLE

 
LIFESTYLE

So after all that, it came to comp day, followed by the eagerly anticipated after party and prize giving. Plenty of spectators from near and far went up to the Nebelhorn to see the nine knights in action. The weather was not perfect, but the knights still showed the tricks they have practised all week.  Henrik Harlaut  was the outstanding rider of the Nine Knights 2009. The euro open champion was slaying the 21 meter box (best trick: pretzl 360 switch up, switch up, pretzl 270) and winning the „best jibber“ category. He also convinced the judges with his jumping skills and won a set of Dotz rims in the category „best kicker“. Thomas Hlawitschka was once more the ruler of the quaterpipe and also took a set of Dotz rims…lets hope hope Henrik learns to drive soon, and Thomas gets a better car!

At the afterparty the riders and photographers judged the second highlight of the day: The Nine Knights photo competition. Johan Stahlberg (Swe), Pally Learmond (UK), Stef Cande (Fra), Klaus Polzer (Ger) and Alo Belluscio (It) created the most amazing images you can possibly imagine and it was very hard to pick the very best shots.

At the end though, Johan Stahlberg won the best action shot, capturing some amazing sunset doule action on the castle.

“Most creative angle” as well as  “best black & white photo” went to Stef Cande from france.

Best Black and White (picture courtesty of www.stefcande.com)

As for me, well i managed to pick up best Lifestyle for the revealing image seen above in the article, so instead i’ll leave you with this one that didn’t make the cut

Of course, thats not all that happened at the after party…it got crazy (mainly started by Laurent Favre ripping everyones shirts off!) and went on way in to the small hours!

So then, many thanks  goes to Nico Zacek, Almdudler, Voelkl/Marker who made the week such a succes. Check out www.nineknights.com for further blogs, pics, videos and infos about the event.

words and pictures: Pally Learmond (except where stated)