The notorious Grenade crew has outdone themselves with this most recent video addition on their site. In a nutshell: an urgent transmission arrives at Grenade Headquarters. Mission 33 to be exact. General Kass abruptly stops his skate sesh to rally his troops. Next thing you know Kass, Sketchy D, Kevin Casillo, Tom Tom, and (of course) The Dingo are starring in their very own Grenade-esque remake of "On A Boat ft. T-Pain"

Keep an eye out for a real life mermaid, the infamous Zumiez orange couch, Sketchy D's flawless lip syncing pirate impression and a pseudo-impressive special effect explosion at the end of the video. Well done boys, well done.




The Grenade website has been going off recently. If you haven't been over there in a while make the jump and waste some time perusing the vids, blogs, and contests where you can win all kinds of signature Danny Kass memorabilia.

Photos by Phil Erickson courtesy of Burton

"Cracker of a day". That's New Zealand slang for "It's a really nice day here". I learned it this morning when the kiwi PR girl sent me an email letting me know the exciting news for the days Halfpipe Qualification rounds. The previous day's Slopestyle qualifications had been held under absolute crap weather, so you can understand how it was exciting news when the weather took an unexpected turn for the better.

So bluebird it was, and subsequently some decent riding got dolled out. Over 100 riders had to vie for a spot in the top 10 men and 5 women that would move onto Saturday's main event- Halfpipe Semi-Finals and Halfpipe Finals.

To keep it somewhat short (You can check the Burton Global Open Series website if you want to make it long) it was little Norweigen Stale "Style" Sandbech who showed everyone how it's done. His run consisted of back to back 7's, a couple 540's and a massive backside air tailgrab. (Stale's tailgrabs are insane. Hopefully someone, somewhere got a photo of that.)

Fun trivia fact for you. Stale Standbech is the little brother of Frode Sandbech, one of Transworld Snowboarding Magazine's talented Senior Photographers. Stale does everything BUT ride his brothers successful coattails. When you are lucky enough to see the kid ride in person you'll understand how. Keep an eye out for that one.

In an interesting turn of international affairs, only one American squeaked thru qualifications today. Coming in 10th was Steamboat Springs, CO native Taylor Gold. With a start list of 100 riders, even 10th is pretty damn impressive.

So, these top 10 Men move on to face the likes of pre-qualified halfpipe riders Danny Davis, Shaun White, Danny Kass, Scotty Lago, Luke Mitrani, Mason Aguirre and more. (No pressure guys.) Congrats on making it through.

The girls had a better day today with the weather abiding. U.S. rider Clair Bidez took it for the women. The five ladies who made it thru today are up against the legendary Kelly Clark and new-to-pipe-but-kills-it Jamie Anderson. Jamie actually won the pipe event last year, and I do believe it was the first professional pipe contest she has ever entered, although Jamie is a long-time and well-known dominatrix when it comes to Slopestyle. Girl goes big.

RESULTS:

Halfpipe Qualifications Men
1 Stale Sandbech NOR Oslo Oakley
2 Tore Holvik NOR Geilo Sweet
3 Johann Baisamy FRA Neuvecelle Billabong
4 Dimi Jong NED Den Haag O’Neill
5 Kleivdal Roger NOR Geilo Sweet
6 Stewart Ben NZL Whaangamata O'Neill
7 Christian Haller SUI Zernez Burton
8 Steve Krijbolder NED Zoetermeer O'Neill
9 Shuhei Sato JPN Asahikawa Gray
10 Taylor Gold USA Steamboat Springs Burton


Halfpipe Qualifications Women
1 Clair Bidez USA Minturn Nikita
2 Ryoko Iijima JPN Saitamaken Moss
3 Silvia Mittermueller GER München Oakley
4 Ursina Haller SUI Zernez K2
5 Naho Mizuki JPN Inuyama Aichi Ride

Come back later and we'll fill you in. The good stuff is yet to come. (Finals, they are really what matter at the 2009 Burton New Zealand Open anyway.)

Photos by Phil Erickson courtesy of Burton

Right now down in New Zealand, where it's already mid-day tomorrow, the Burton Global Open Series (BGOS) is kicking off at Cardrona Resort outside of Wanaka. The BGOS is pretty much as big a deal as it gets in Snowboarding competition (well, ok besides the Winter X Games and the Olympics). Here's why.

First of the year
Not only is this the first stop in the five stop Burton Global Open Series, but its officially the first competition of the year in Snowboarding.

$100,000 on the line
At the end of the five competitions Burton hands out TWO $100,000 dollar checks. One to the overall women. One to the overall man. (Overall means both halfpipe and slopestyle, which they have at all five stops)

A whole lotta other money
They hand out a butt-load of cash at each of the competitions. The purse varies from stop to stop, but its usually enough incentive to draw in the best of the best.

Pressure's off
The Burton Global Open Series doesn't official earn the riders a spot into the Olympics this February (that would be the Grand Prix series, more on that later) so the riders can "let their hair down" so-to-speak.

Pressure's on
The riders can earn points towards TTR (Ticket to Ride) the most noted ranking system within snowboarding. It's a big honor (and some big money) to win the overall title each season on the TTR tour. The majority of competitions in snowboarding are given a "Star" status depending on how big a deal the competition is. (5 Star, 4 Star, 3 Star, etc.) The higher the TTR Star status, the higher the points earned for placing well.

Each stop of the BGOS is a 6 Star event including this one in New Zealand, so yeah... its kinda a big deal.

The Darkhorse
By definition of the contest being an "open", anybody and their sister can sister can sign up for it. So that means a lot of riders who you and I have never heard of have a chance of getting some exposure by good-'ol-fashioned hard work and standout riding. It's how a lot of the pro's you know of now have made their mark.

It takes a couple days of eliminations to whittle it down, but it's always exciting to see the Finals line-up in each event. You'll have two or three no-names standing at the top of the pipe with riders like Shaun White and Danny Kass- (talk about pressure)

Never before seen tricks?
The newest fad in snowboarding is a trick called a "double-cork". Lucky for you, double corks are about as cool to watch as a huge backflip gainer- but much harder to execute, so riders will actually score uber-points with the judges. (Big ol' gainer backflips are neat to watch but don't score high with judges b/c they are actually easier than flat-spins to perform.)

It is quite possible that we may seen some never-before-done-in-competition tricks at the New Zealand Open since the top guys have been training for months trying to gain the advantage with their own versions of the double-cork. Shaun White is said to have a halfpipe run with four double-corks in a row. Louie Vito, Luke Mitrani, Danny Kass are all pre-qualified for semi-finals and they are all rumored to have a double cork. There are others too.

On the other hand... if none of the riders who "have a double-cork" in their bag of tricks decide to step-it up and throw one down, raising the standard, than we may not see the phenomena this week in New Zealand. These riders may collectively choose to save these harder tricks for competitions that will qualify them for the Olympics.

It's hot here and it's not there
Get your snow fix. Its the middle of winter in New Zealand. After this, we're not going to see much action on the snowboard competition side of things until November... which is still 3 months away.



Check back for updates, photos and results from the New Zealand Burton Open. Other sweet sites to check out are www.opensnowboarding.com and www.ttrworldtour.com

On the left: Danny Kass, two-time Olympic medalist and one of the U.S. snowboarders rumored to be caught in New Zealand this week with "not an insignificant amount" of marijuana.

The rumor mill has been hard at work today. A few snowboarding websites have been posting a similar story regarding a New Zealand newspaper (Queenstown's The Southland TImes) headlining "US Snowboarders Up On Dope Charges". Link.

The article states that there were two American snowboarders, ages 21 and 26, pulled over in Wanaka, NZ during a random roadside breath testing.

The article continues on to quote the sergeant Paul Crosswell of Wanaka Police Department who said the two males were caught with "not an insignificant amount" of cannabis in the car. (Interesting wording there)

The author of the story does not name names, but does call out the 26 year old male as an "influential male snowboarder" who has won double Winter Olympic medals. He then refers to the 21 year old male as a candidate "vying to represent the US at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next year."

Which leads anyone with any capable google-ing skill to figure out that Danny Kass is a 26 year old male who has won two medals at Winter Olympic games.

And, furthermore, it is seemingly known within tight snowboarding circles that Danny and Louie Vito (age 21) are currently traveling and riding together in New Zealand in a van that they purchased and had painted. Danny just posted a picture of the van on his twitter account.


Not too conspicuous. Not really.

Oh boys, boys, boys. There is no authoritative answer from any source at this point acknowledging that it was Danny and Louie, but we can certainly see where all the speculation comes from.

The Southland Times article says the men will stand in front of the District Court in Queenstown on Monday (August 10th).

Another slightly odd part of the article points out that the riders are very "high profile", and the only other high-profile cannabis case in New Zealand was in 2000 when a US billionaire philanthropist Peter Lewis was "discharged without a conviction when he paid more than $50,000 to charity after admittedly importing more than 23g of cannabis".

$50,000 dollars! Yikes. (Thats 33,000 + in US dollars). But wait, the guy imported weed and got off without a conviction because he paid off charity? Did we read that right?

Anyway, the smart guys over at Boardistan looked up cannabis charges in New Zealand via the New Zealand Herald and found that "that maximum penalty for a conviction for possession of marijuana is three months' jail and/or a NZ$500 fine (US$330)". Link.

If there is any more news regarding the US riders caught with weed in New Zealand we will post it here at the GrindTV.com snow blog. Otherwise we'll be looking forward to seeing both Louie and Danny riding in the Burton New Zealand Open next week at Cardrona Resort just outside of Wanaka, as well as in the World Cup Olympic Qualifier the following week.


Louie Vito, the younger rider rumored to be involved. Just to make it clear. Nothing is official. No one knows yet the true identity of the riders. (Editor Note: While we do not promote the use of drugs in any way, we do promote both Danny Kass and Louie Vito as stand up guys, exceptional athletes and great representations of our country in the upcoming Olympics should they succeed to qualify.)

[other sources via Yobeat and ESPN]

This past weekend Snowboarder Magazine held it's inventive new contest "America's Next Top Pro Model" at the summer shredding glacier on Mt. Hood, Oregon in the world acclaimed Windells snowboard park. If you missed our coverage from the first day, pop-in over here to check out some video shorts from the "High-Ollie" and "Best Jibber" contest.

Going into day two of the contest the 20 pro riders, all riding their new insignia snowboards, were tasked with three more on-snow mini-events. This time the schedule for the day started with the "Spin to Win" contest, followed by the "Biggest Air" and then capped off with the carnage-filled, crowd-pleasing "Chinese Downhill".

Rather than force your eyes to go numb by actually reading, go ahead and check out these vids we whipped together. (We're not aiming for quality here, obviously. Our apologies.)

For banger photo coverage you'll have to head over to Snowboardermag.com. It's their signature contest so they have the legit coverage in the works... we were more like the annoying friend of a friend that showed up and out of pity was allowed to hang out.

Spin to Win:



Biggest Air:



For footage from the Chinese Downhill you'll have to wait with bated breath for the official Snowboarder Magazine video edit (coming soon to a website near you). We totally missed it... but we were told that yes, indeed there was plenty of spitting, shoving and carnage. Breaking thru the finnish line first was the unstoppable Fin Lauri Heiskari, followed by American badass Bryan Fox, with another Finnish luminary, Eero Ettala, coming in third.

After shredding the hot snow all day the riders and the crowd moved down the hill to the Windells Campus where the pro's put on their philanthropist game-faces and started hawking their own pro-models to the Windells campers in a silent auction.

Each board sold to the highest bidder, and the money for all the boards was collected and given to the charity chosen by the rider who received the highest bid out of all the boards. That rider who received the highest bid out of everyone was the revered Eddie Wall, who brought in $300 bucks for his Forum pro-model. The auction pulled together a total of $1909.00 that was donated to St. Judes Hospital, Eddie's charity of choice.

With each mini contest, including the five on snow events and the silent auction, the riders stacked up points that went towards determining the overall rider who would win the title of "America's Next Top Pro Model". Throughout the weekend there was an undeniable standout. Lauri Heiskari, on his DC Snowboards XFB Pro board, won the Highest Ollie, Chinese Downhill and Biggest Air contests, and even placed third in the Spin to Win, making him the most winningest rider of the weekend and earning him the crown of America's Top Pro Model. If that's not some bragging rights for DC Snowboards and Lauri's R&D skills than we'd like to know what is.

Besides checking out all of the coverage online, be sure to pick up a copy of Snowboarder Magazine's November issue to see America's Next Top Pro Model in all it's glory with the aesthetics of print.