With only 20 men and 5 women to go through to the finals the standard was amazing bringing out the best runs the field have been working on in build up to the sport’s introduction to the Winter Olympics is Sochi Russia. With valuable world tour points and $20,000US up for grabs The Mile High by Carlton Dry has become one of the most important snowboarding events in the southern hemisphere.

Stand out male athletes were Billy Morgan of Great Britain and a small army of Norwegians led by one of the world’s biggest names in snowboarding Torstein Horgmo. Billy finished his winning run with a spectacular backside double corked 1260 and Torstein’s stand out trick of his top scoring run was the Front blunt 450 on the flat bar gap rail.

Australians didn’t fail to disappoint breaking into tomorrow’s finals representing well with Jess Rich, Lauren Staveley, Scotty James, Robbie Walker and Jye Kearney.  All of the Australians who qualified are potential Australian representatives at the upcoming Olympics so well worth keeping an eye out for.

The highest level of progression in snowboarding right now is a new range of tricks known as the triple corks. Consisting of 3 inverted rotations (flips) and a minimum of 4 full rotations (spins) none of the varieties of triples has even been seen in Australia and are new to the sport only in the past 12 months. The Mile High by Carlton Dry was being built up as the event that may get to first make the claim due to an international competitor line up of 10 of the world’s top 20 competitors and a depth of over 50 of the world’s best snowboarders. Within minutes of the day’s action kicking off, the Norwegian superstar Gjermund Braaten took the title of the first person to attempt a triple cork unfortunately not making it cleanly but determined to be the first person to land it in competition tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow sees the final 25 riders having 2 judged runs and a 30-minute jam format big air event named Carlton Dry 30 squashed nicely in between. Freeskiers join the snowboarders in tomorrow’s session with big names like Russ Henshaw competing. The freeski event is overall impression jam format mixed with the snowboarders final so it is set to be another big day of competition with big cash prizes for the lucky few.

The results from tomorrow will see changes to the World Tour slopestyle rankings so stay tuned to see what happens at www.themilehigh.com.au and for tons of video content that will be uploaded over the next few days check http://www.facebook.com/AUS.SNOW.PROTOUR. and #themilehigh13 on Instagram.

Mens slopestyle qualification top 10

1st  Billy Morgan (GB)
2nd  Torstein Horgmo (NOR)
3rd Emil Andre Ulsletten (NOR)
4th Aleksander Ostreng (NOR)
5th Gjermund Braaten (NOR)
6th  Stale Sandbech (NOR)
7th  Sage Kotsenburg (US)
8th Chas Guldemond (US)
9th Tyler Nicholson (CAN)
10th  Torgeir Bergrem (NOR)
Womens slopestyle qualification top 10

1st Brooke Voigt (CAN)
2nd  Silje Norendal (NOR)
3rd Michelle Zeller (US)
4th  Jess Rich (AUS)
5th Lauren Staveley (AUS)