The familiar, sweet taste of victory was firmly on O'Neill Team rider, Gian Simmen's (CH) lips this week (14th December 2003) after the World and Olympic champion added the Nissan X-trail Jam, BIG Air title to his long and distinguished list of snowboarding accolades. The 4th edition of the Nissan X-trail event, staged inside the massive Tokyo Dome in Japan, provoked a host of snowboarding's household names as well as local heroes to duke it out over the quarter pipe and straight jump disciplines. The event also marked the beginning of the 2003/04 Ticket To Ride (TTR) tour.

In front of a monstrous crowd totalling 45,000 people, Simmen eclipsed the star studded line up, which included the likes of Terje Haakonsen (NOR), Travis Rice (USA), Eero Ettala (FIN) and Heikki Sorsa (FIN) in the straight jump, big air discipline en-route to taking the top spot at the end of the 20 minute Jam final. 2nd place went to Japans Haku Suzuki and third place to DCP from Canada.

With only two jumps counting in the final, riders had to pull out all the stops and lay everything on the line from the off to be in title contention.

"That first jump was the best BS 900 Indy I've ever done." Said Simmen. "I rode in jumped off grabbed my board rotated, tweaked and landed. The huge crowd went totally crazy! For the second jump I did a FS 900 Indy but I checked a little in the landing so I was not sure if this was enough to win the contest so I could not believe it when they announced that I had won. I was stoked, probably the happiest Person on Earth at that moment" he added.

After fulfilling his media duties and a marathon autograph session the Swiss Hip Hop head celebrated his latest win at the after show party. Gian now heads back to Switzerland for the next date in the TTR calendar the O'Neill SB-Jam in Davos. Amped and with the first win of the season under his belt you can bet this won't be the last time you see him on top this winter.