Burton New Zealand Open 2007

7-11 August 07

The Burton New Zealand Open has been setting the standard of snowboarding events in Aotearoa for the past five years. Again Snowpark NZ in the Cardrona Valley will host the 5 days of competition and festivities from 7th - 11th August, transforming Snowpark, the Cardrona Valley and Wanaka township into the highlight week of the NZ winter calendar

There's a $50k prize purse and registration is open until 5pm, Wednesday 27th June 2007

The format

The competition gets underway on Wednesday August 8 with the men’s and women’s halfpipe qualifiers in Snow Park NZ’s giant superpipe. On Thursday August 9 the action moves to Snow Park NZ’s gravity-defying Slopestyle course for the qualifiers followed by the Slopestyle Semi-finals and Finals on Friday August 10.

Friday night will see no-holds barred massive air in the quarterpipe under floodlights with 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 11 when the world’s best will fight it out for the Open title.

Off snow, there’s plenty going on in downtown Wanaka with the evening Open Sessions featuring live gigs from top Kiwi bands Opensouls (Thursday 9 August) and Shapeshifter (Saturday 11 August).

Competitors announced

Olympic gold medalists and X Games champions are among the athletes who will compete at Snow Park NZ in New Zealand’s biggest snowboarding event.

Former World Superpipe Champion (’06) Mason Aguirre (18) will return to see if he can make it three in a row and retain his men’s champion title as well as the quarterpipe title. He is joined by Olympic gold medalist, Kelly Clark (24) who will defend the women’s championship and quarterpipe titles following her double win last year. Both hailing from the United States they will have tough competition on their hands in the form of their fellow countrymen. Ross Powers (28) owns more halfpipe titles than any other rider in history including a gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics while Elena Hight (17) was the youngest rider to compete at the Torino Olympics last year. Other high profile athletes confirmed for the event include Keir Dillon (USA), Heikki Sorsa (Finland) and Kazuhiro Kokubo (Japan).

Going head to head with the world’s best will be top Kiwi riders Juliane Bray (31), Mitch Brown (19) and Kendall Brown (17), all of whom represented New Zealand at last year’s Winter Olympics.

Event organiser, Reuben Yeoman, said the event was shaping up to the biggest yet. “We’ve got a very impressive field of athletes from all over the world and each year the level of riding gets pushed higher and higher. Both the Halfpipe and Slopestyle events promise to feature spectacular riding while the Quarterpipe Invitational is always a major crowd puller with its no-holds-barred atmosphere.”

The Burton New Zealand Open is free to watch for spectators and last year attracted crowds of more than 8,000. The event takes place on August 7 to 11 at Snow Park NZ near Lake Wanaka. For more information on the Burton New Zealand Open head to www.opensnowboarding.com

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