WhiteWorld

The Burton NZ Open is the pinnacle of snowboarding competition in the Southern Hemisphere and attracts the world’s top professional riders including X Games champions, Olympic gold medallists and world champions, all competing for the largest title payout in snowboarding. The male and female cumulative-points champions will each collect US$100,000 after competing in the New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and USA events, and New Zealand is the first port of call on the international circuit.

Competition gets underway on Wednesday July 30th with the men’s and women’s halfpipe qualifiers. On Thursday July 31st the action moves to Snow Park NZ’s newly designed slopestyle course for the qualifiers followed by the Slopestyle Semi-finals and Finals on Friday August 1st.

Friday night will see awe-inspiring massive air in the invitational quarterpipe under floodlights with live music from top New Zealand DJ’s. Spectators can watch all the action for free from a specially created grandstand carved out of snow. All eyes will be on the Superpipe Semi-finals and Finals on Saturday August 2nd when the world’s best will fight it out for the Open title and a share of the NZ$50,000 prize purse.

The action is just as exciting off-snow with the Gravis Open Sessions featuring some of the biggest names in Kiwi music every night of the Burton NZ Open, from the launch party on July 29th to the wrap celebrations on August 2nd.

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From the 17th to 20th April the best boarders will be in Saas Fee for the arrival of the Swatch TTR Snowboard Tour, “SNICKERS Classic & POPCORN Wallride 08″.

It’s the second time the glacier ski resort has hosted the freestyle event which endeavours to test who will get higher, travel faster and go further. Nicolas Müller, last year’s “the King of Popcorn 2007″will be competing again. The event will be staged in the Längfluh area kicking off with Qualification Slopestyle on Thursday 17th hosted by Scott Sullivan and the Kin liv at Popcorn Bar.

On Friday the 18th the Semi Finale Slopestyle with party at the Living Room Bar. On Saturday 19th it the Slopestyle Final with Brutal God performing live at the Popcorn Bar and DJ Stylewarz spinning in Living Room Bar. The event winds up on Sunday, the 20th with the Wallride Session “King of Popcorn.”

Saas Fee’s season continues for another two weeks after the event through to May 4th.

www.saas-fee.ch

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Scottish Ski Resort Boss “Increasingly Optimistic” That Season Will Extend In To May.

CairnGorm Mountain chief executive Bob Kinnaird has told the BBC that snow conditions for the season had been of a high quality. “We are becoming increasingly optimistic that we could be offering skiing on Cairngorm into May.” He said.

The resort, one of the largest of five in Scotland, hit its annual skier visit target of 51,000 last weekend. The tally is in line with the average over the past five seasons when the ski area’s totals have varied between 38,553 (last winter – when little snow arrived before March and almost all visits were made between March and May) and 58,500 in the winter of 2003-4.

This season has seen much more consistent snowfall right through the season, although along with it the usual challenges of extreme weather conditions on some days, along with perfect still, blue sky powder days on others that are the two normal extremes of Scottish skiing.

Another month of skiing could see Cairngorm pass the 2003-4 total and post their best skier visit results since 2001-2 when more than 80,000 skiers visited.

The season before and through most winters in previous decades it was more than 100,000, but today Cairngorm and several of the other Scottish ski areas have greatly increased their summer visitation.

The four other Scottish ski areas are all also reporting business well up this year.

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What a fantastic event!  The Serfaus weather was kind, the girls were ready and the atmosphere was just buzzing.  Earlier on in the day, during qualifications, the snow flurries set in reducing visibility but soon cleared up with bright sunny spells shining as the afternoon wore on and the finals took place. All in all there were nineteen girls who took part on the women’s contest and three in the juniors.  Eleven went through to the women’s finals and deciding judges Julia (Baumgartner) and Vinzenz Lüps were impressed with the standard of riding which had improved from even last year’s event.  First, second and third places were clear whilst placing four to eight made for some difficult decisions.   Founder and Head Designer of Nikita Clothing Heida Birgisdottir was in Serfaus to witness the contest and give away prizes as well to do some shredding herself.  When asked, she said that “it’s great to see how much the girls are progressing, not only in tricks, but also in style. I’m stoked that we at Nikita have been able to create an event where the girls get together and push each other without the often not so pleasant ‘contest pressure’ in the air. They are just hanging out and chatting between runs, the atmosphere is super friendly - and I think that’s exactly why they are pushing themselves to new levels here today. This is also what makes the Nikita Chickita, as an event, a pure success.” Here’s the WOMENS FINALS RESULTS 

1. Ana Rumiha (Croatia)
2. Bohdana Šebestová (Czech Republic)
3. Maude Richon (Switzerland)
4. Anja Stefan (Croatia)
5. Elena Kenz (Switzerland)
6. Sandy Gecek (Austria)
7. Hanka Voyteckovska (Czech Republic)
8. Helen Wyss (Switzerland)
9. Agnieszka Rusin (Poland)
10. Cristina Tuberosa (Italy)
11. Sandra Graf (Switzerland)

 …and the JUNIORS FINALS RESULTS 

1. Katarzyna Rusin (Poland)
2. Sophie Gogl (Austria)
3. Viktoria Bayer (Austria)

 Ana Rumiha competed last year and just missed out on a podium place in the women’s finals by finishing 4^th, this year she was a clear winner with some really safe and stylish runs.  She did three different runs in the finals, the last of which was awesome.  It consisted of a backside 180, frontside 360 indy and she was the only girl who bonked the tree with a nice frontside 180, then frontside 360 on the wall.  She won 1,000 Euros and the coveted one-year Nikita contract.  Congrats from Snowzone.tv to both, Ana Rumiha (Croatia) and Katarzyna Rusin (Poland) on their wins! 

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Billabong rider Jamie Anderson wins the coveted Swatch TTR World Champion Trophy.
At the age of 17, Jamie from South Lake Tahoe has clearly established herself as a leader in the woman’s snowboarding.
Jamie becomes the TTR world champion after an amazing competitive year, she was placed in the Top 3 at every major TTR Slopestyle event this season winning the European Open, and the Chicken Jam securing her lead in the TTR race.
Jamie has showcased solid and consistent riding throughout the year, The X-games Gold Medalist has put another prestigious trophy under her belt.

Fast facts about Jamie :

Dob : September 13, 1990
From : South Lake Tahoe (USA)
Sponsors : Billabong, Electric, Grenade, Salomon.
Youngest TTR World champion ever crowned.
2008 Winter X-games Gold Medalist (Slopestyle)

07/08 season highlights :
1st PLACE  :     
TTR 6-Star Burton European Open (slopestyle)
TTR 6-Star Roxy Chicken Jam USA (slopestyle)
TTR 6-star O’Neill Evolution in Davos (quarterpipe)
TTR 4 star Garnier Fructis Australian Open (slopestyle)

2ND PLACE :
TTR 6-Star Burton US Open (slopestyle)
TTR 6-Star Roxy Chicken Jam Austria (slopestyle)
TTR 5-Star Nissan X-Trail Nippon Open (slopetyle)

Fast facts about Billabong Girls Snowboarding  :

Billabong Snowboard girls team finishes at the top of the TTR brand ranking.

Jenny Jones (UK) = 6th place         
Claudia Fliri (AUT) = 9th place

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It’s the 8th of April, and yet again, I receive a report from Aspen saying they have had another 25cms of fresh snow! What is it with them?  Did they sell their souls to the devil so they could have the best snow on the planet?

Photo Credit: Jeremy Swanson

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