Feverish preparations for the “Big Air” in Sofia

Georgi Georgiev, VisitBulgaria.NET

Part of the loading platform for the Snowboard FIS World Cup Big Air Sofia 2007 was discharged yesterday on “Kniaz Aleksander I Batenberg” Square in Sofia. Snowboard World Cup Big Air is the most important snowboard contest in Bulgaria and Sofia host such an event for the first time.
The unique facility is 31 m high, 25 m wide and 100 m long and it was transported from Switzerland. It will be mounted till the 19th of December. About 300 t of snow will be dumped over the platform in December 21st. Big Air demonstrations will take place on the same date’s evening. The competition itself is on the next day.
The best snowboarders in the world will come in Sofia for the prestigious event. 60 athletes from 15 countries requested their participation. The pretenders for the world cup, Janne Koppy (Finland), Peetu Piiroinen (Finland), Risto Mattila (Finland), Stefan Gimpl (Austria) certainty will be on the square on the 22th of December. Bulgaria will be presented by Mario Benio, Dimitar Chokoev and Asen Lilov.
The finals will be carried out during the evening. The loading platform and the competitors will be illuminated by spotlights and the spectators will be able to watch every single motion of the snowboarding stunts on a huge screen.
Snowboard competitions on a loading platform have been organized since 1997. The first one was in Berlin. 10 years later Sofia is the yet another European capital which hosts the Big Air contest which proves that Bulgaria is very attractive winter sports destination.