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Another day of bluebird skies graced Cardrona Alpine Resort, which remained impervious to the clouds, sitting above the inversion layer once again for men's and women's slopestyle semifinal and final competitions today. Part of the Burton Global Open Series and the Swatch Ticket To Ride World Snowboard Tour, the seventh annual New Zealand Open showcased some of the world's best riders as they took to Cardrona's 800m long slopestyle course, which featured up and downrails, boxes, three kickers and a unique upstair feature to quarterpipe.



A field of 42 men and 16 women were battling it out for a piece of the $24,000 slopestyle prize purse and the top spots worth $6,000 each. An international field of riders from nine countries included New Zealand's own Shelly Gotlieb, James Hamilton, Stef Zeestraten, in addition to BGOS Champions Chas Guldemond and Jamie Anderson, Olympians Danny Kass and Mason Aguirre, and many more.



The women were first to drop and competition was stiff through semifinals, but it was Kiwi Shelly Gotlieb that came out on top, killing it on the course with a run that featured style and variety on the rails, a Cab 5 indy, a backflip and a backside 360 tailgrab. Gotlieb continued to ride strong through the finals, taking third, being outdone by Janna Weatherby (USA) in second and 2008 NZO slopestyle champion Jamie Anderson (USA) in first. Anderson impressed the judges with a run that started with a street style tailslide, 5-0 to fakie on the box into a switch backside 360 on the first kicker, followed by a Cab 540 melon into a front 360 melon, followed by a 5-0 on the uprail, to a tail stall on the quarterpipe, finishing with a 50/50 frontside boardslide on the kinked rail. "I had a blast," said Anderson of her win. "It was a beautiful day, we lucked out with the weather, and I was happy with my riding, I had so much fun today."



French Canadians Sebastien Toutant and Charles Reid clinched the top two spots in men's semifinals, Toutant taking the top spot by wowing the judges with his signature "Toutsie Roll," a backside doublecork 1080 melon. Reid couldn't stick his run in the finals, dropping him to the back of the pack, but Torstein Horgmo (NOR) threw down in his third and final run with back to back 1080s, giving him an edge and finishing second. Eric Willet (USA) stuck back-to-back 900s and had smooth style on the rails, giving him an edge and riding away with third. But in the end, Sebastien recreated his winning run from semis by starting off with a backside 270 on the first rail to 50/50 backside 360 on the second rail, into a backside rodeo 540 indy, into a Cab 900 stalefish, followed by a backside 1080 double cork melon, followed by a noseslide on the uprail to alleyoop backside 50/50 on the quarter, finishing with a frontside boardslide on the kinked rail. "I'm so stoked to win my first contest of the year," said Toutant. "It was a great course, very different. I had fun trying new things and am so happy to do well."



With 850 TTR ranking points, both winners of today's slopestyle finals took over the world number one spots on the Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour. The Burton New Zealand Open is a perfect opportunity for riders to get a jumpstart heading into the Northern Hemisphere winter.
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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 Mnchen 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

The first few days of any of the Burton Global Open Series stops are brutal. They have to whittle fields of hundreds of riders down to just 10 men and 5 women. They do this for the men with a pre-qualifier (25 men get in) and then a qualifier (the 25 dudes compete against each other for the 10 spots.) The 45 women vying to even make it in the even don't get a pre-qualifier. They cut them down from 45 to 5 in one foul swoop. Harsh.

They do this in two days. One day for Slopestyle, and one for Halfpipe. They are long-ass days. Take it from me, I've been at plenty of them- including a couple in New Zealand.

They are even longer when the weather is crappy. And insider reports claim that the weather was not only crappy on the first day during the Slopestyle knock-out rounds at Cardrona Resort, but that it was downright shitty. And, as fate would have it, the shitty weather got shittier after the men finished competing, just as the girls stepped up to the plate. Poor darlings really got the blunt end of the stick this day.

The girls took their first run and the weather got so bad that they postponed the second run until the next day, a rare occurrence at any snowboard competition. The girls are slated to battle out the final run on Friday morning. The top five will go straight into Finals that afternoon.

Here are the Men's results from Slopestyle Qualifications. These lucky few will go on to compete against the riders that are previously qualified from last year's BGOS rankings for Semi-Finals (Semi-Finals and Finals happen this weekend), and the fields are STACKED. The mens start list is boasting riders like Torstein Horgmo, Chas Guldemond, Antti Autti, Danny Davis, Peetu Piiroinen, and Tim Humphreys. On the Women's side slopestyle slayers like Chanelle Sladics, Jamie Anderson, Silvia Mittermuller, and Spencer O'Brien. It's gonna be a good one.

Slopestyle Qualification Results

MEN
1 Atsushi Ishikawa JPN Flow
2 Sergey Tarasov RUS Burton
3 Christian "Hitch" Haller SUI Burton
4 Tore Holvik NOR Sweet
5 Arthur Longo FRA Volcom
6 Sage Kotsenburg USA Quiksilver
7 Eric Beauchemin USA DC
8 Gjermund Braaten NOR DC Shoe Co USA
9 Johann Baisamy FRA Billabong
10 Jye Kearney AUS Burton


Check back for more results and other random crap from the 2009 Burton New Zealand Open.

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