Jimmy Blaze at Winter X
Jan 26 2007 / Aspen, COJimmy Blaze. Freestyle snowmobile rider. Cody Doucette and I were checking out his sled and he came over to give us the low down. Jimmy got his nickname as a kid when he accidentally set himself on fire.
JB: This is a new sled from Yamaha called the Phaser and it’s a whole new design. It’s rider forward, and they took the syling of a dirt bike a four wheeler and it feels like a stand up jet ski. They threw out all they stuff they know about snowmobiles and made one off of that print.
Lat34: How’s it ride?
JB: Awesome! I’ve got probably another 2-3 inches more travel than the rest of the field. I’ve got 14 inches in the front, 16 inches in the rear. These ones right here, out of the box come with 500cc’s, a 4 stroke motor which makes 80 horse power. This is strickly a freestyle sled, even though you could race them if you wanted to.
Lat34: How would they do as a mountain sled?
JB: Oh these are awesome. They actually build a mountain version called the Phaser Mountain Light. The Phaser comes with a 121 inch track with an inch and a half paddle track on it. The Mountain Light comes with a 144 inch track and 2 inch paddles. So these are awesome. A lot of the pro snowboarders are getting them. They’re easy to use, electric start, you change the oil once a year, they run on basic premium gas. They’re just so simple, there’s no maintenance on them. There are guys putting 20,000 miles on these and that’s just unheard of with other conventional snow mobiles.
Lat34: So what are your events?
JB: Freestyle and we have trials tonight.
It’s elimination tonight. They take the best of two runs.
Lat34: How are the jumps?
JB: The jumps are OK. They feel really good. It’s a little different. Some of them are step ups and step downs which makes things a little different. Usually we work off of a flat platform. But this will separate the riders. You know I’ve been battling a back injury for the last two weeks and I just injured it again last night, so we’ll see. I’m actually heading down to medical right now to check out these back spasms I’ve been having.
Jimmy crashed later that night and did not move out of the elimination rounds.
-Rebecca Rusch
