Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Meet Peetu Piiroinen

Ok, I know, this is a blog about my horses and their retraining efforts. However, my work as a golf administrator for the USGA has me doing a bit of traveling this month so I won't be writing much about the boys and their extended vacation with their hooligan gang of geldings.

However, since the Winter Olympic games are about to begin, I thought everyone would like read about a little road trip I made to nearby Gaylord, MI. Home of the Otsego Club who has one of the few Olympic size snowboard 1/2 pipes around. This attracted many olympic teams.

Of course this presented me with a very cool photography opportunity. My problem is that I didn't know too much about snowboarding and who the "in" snowboarders were. The only guy I had heard of was the Flying Tomato, Shaun White.

I did some research and found out what teams were going to be around when I went out. Finland was one of them. Turns out that Shaun White's toughest competitor is a young man named Peetu Piiroinen.




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Peetu is currently ranked #1 on the SWATCH TTR World Snowboard Tour.

So off I went (actually "we" went since Matt was with me) for a little photography adventure.



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We found Peetu with no problem.



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Matt spoke with the Finnish coach who was very nice to us and put up with some of our questions.



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Peetu was practicing again and again while Matt and I were shooting...


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That last photo became this photo from Matt's camera:




It was a great time and Matt and I will be cheering for our new friends, the Fins! Go Peetu!

If you are interested in seeing more of our photos of Peetu, the Fins and even some of the Spanish Team members you can see them here (mine) and here (Matt's).



I swear those guys can fly!

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5 comments:

  1. I want to name a horse Peetu. How fun.

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  2. Great photos! My mother is from Finland, and my family follows Finnish snowboarding, via the live webcasts. We were hoping Piiroinen would be competing in the Canadian Open this past week, but it looks like he was having a fine time practicing instead. So looking forward to the Olympics!

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  3. Thanks! I'm a huge fan of the Fin team now! Can't wait for the Olympics to start!

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  4. I think I would start crying if I was ever able to shoot one picture with those cameras...so jealous! I love your blog because I too have an OTTB who is learning dressage with me. And your pictures are just so fantastic!

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  5. Your pictures are simply fantastic! [: I had to go through your entire blog to stalk through all of them just to admire! Good luck with your two beautiful horses - the pictures of them playing just cracked me up!

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