Freeboarding is a unique form of skateboarding designed to mimic the ‘side to side’ motion of a snowboard by adding two spring-locked center wheels to the bottom of the board and two hooks to maintain a skater’s feet at the top.

Freeboarders are urban skaters who favor long, twisty downhill segments of nice smooth asphalt to get that free and fast snowboarding feeling.

Nutcase is happy to partner with and sponsor LAU Riders, a group of freeboarders headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.

LAU Riders are a team, currently with seven members, who travel the world finding the best spots to practice their sport and setting up urban freeboarding events.

This year’s premier event for the LAU team was the fourth annual “Lausanne Slopestyle” event at which freeboarders could test their skills on a course specially designed to be like the action parks you find on the ski slopes, only this course was laid on a park roadway. Freeboarders at Slopestyle even had a lovely rope tow to get them up to speed for the course.

This year’s Slopestyle, said organizer and LAU member Yoann Chapel, was the best event yet, covered by local media and drawing crowds of enthusiasts.

LAU Team riders wore the Nutcase Locombia helmet designed by Unframed artist Sandra Ramirez.

The Nutcase Locombia Street helmet, according to Yoann, is a great freeboarding helmet due to its stylish design and thoughtful features.

"Nutcase helmets are full of details that make them better than most of our usual standard helmets – the adjustable Spin-Dial allows a better fit and higher feeling of security that the helmet will stay put. The magnetic strap is also something we appreciate, especially since most of us wear gloves – regular helmet straps are more complicated to close."

Yoann said that freeboarders are pretty disciplined about always wearing a helmet. After a friend and freeboarding community member Sam Trowbridge was killed from a traumatic brain injury as the result of an accident, the "Wear a helmet4ST" campaign (4ST signifying "for Sam Trowbridge) was created and is actively promoted in the freeboarding community.

Go LAU!

Lausanne Slopestyle 2015 - Official Edit from LAU' Riders on Vimeo.