Archive for the ‘Industry’ Category

 

This season Nike, Platinum Partner of TTR, releases the perfect platform for Amateur Snowboarders to step up their game and to compete for a chance to ride alongside some of the world’s greatest Pros.

The Nike Chosen Series will shake up 9 stops across Europe where AM riders will session in a jam format kicker contest hosted by one of the Nike pros.

At each stop a rider will be chosen to join the Nike team riders to compete at the grand finals held at the Nike Chosen Sessions in April 2012.

For AMs who want to take their riding to the next level and to shred with some of the best riders on the planet, the Nike Chosen Series is the opportunity to show what you’ve got.

 

• Each country stop will have prizes for Best Style, Most Creative Rider and Best Female Rider.
• The rider who is judged ‘Best Overall’ at each stop will win the ultimate prize of a ticket to compete in the Finals at the Nike Chosen Sessions in April.
• The best tricks from each stop will be posted online and judged by Facebook likes, the rider with the most votes will receive a wildcard into the finals.

 

For more information on the Nike Chosen Series visit – nikechosenseries.com

 

 

 

 

 

After a successful tour with some serious pop last season, K2 is starting into the 2nd season of their highest ollie tournament tour. This year’s record to break will be the 100cm mark set by Sebi Mueller from Germany. The tour stops will be all over the globe and anyone can enter to take a shot at winning a week at the High Cascade summer camp in Mt. Hood. At every tourstop you have the chance to win a limited K2 skatedeck designed by Don Pendleton and a brand new G-SHOCK watch. The tour final will take place in April 2012 at the Kamp K2 at Stephen’s Pass, USA.

 

For all the info regarding tourstops and sign ups check www.k2snowboarding.com/facebook and start practicing!

 

 

 

 

 

The International Olympic Committee recently approved the qualification process for all International Ski Federation events, including halfpipe and slopestyle for snowboarding, that are scheduled to take place at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games to be held in Sochi, Russia.  This seems like another mundane announcement about snowboarding and the Olympics, but there are some interesting details that run a little bit deeper.

Back in July, the IOC approved the inclusion of slopestyle in the program for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games; a great thing for snowboarding and for slopestyle riders who previously didn’t have an opportunity to make a run for the Olympics.  But, the addition of slopestyle in the Winter Games revived a long-standing debate about the International Ski Federation (FIS) controlling how snowboarding is handled in the Olympics.

FIS currently oversees everything from qualifications and nation quotas to running the actual competitions onsite.  The discussion of FIS control over snowboarding came back into the spotlight and garnered a lot of attention in the snowboard community due to the fact that the FIS has little to no experience running slopestyle competitions (they ran their first slopestyle event in La Molina, Spain in January, 2011).  And, many pro riders also voiced their opposition to FIS getting into the slopestyle game because of how jam-packed the competitive calendar has become for the athletes.  Riders rarely have a weekend off in the winter and are often traveling long distances from the United States to Europe to Asia and back again all in the span of one month.  This basically makes for an unhealthy competitive environment for the athletes who have little time to recover after an event and are dealing with heavy bouts of jet lag.  If the FIS were to create a whole new slopestyle tour, it will make the already busy contest season even more crowded with new events.

With all these issues out in the open, people in the TTR crew took it upon themselves to spark up some discussions with the FIS to see if there were some compromises that could be worked out for the good of the sport and the riders.  TTR event organizers have been running snowboard events, including slopestyle competitions, for decades and have a wealth of experience in progressive course design, fair judging, safety and formats.  With this bank of snowboard contest knowledge, the TTR approached the FIS with the best intentions of authentically representing the sport of snowboarding and helping to develop a fair system for snowboard athletes to qualify for the Olympics.

Talks between TTR and FIS began simply with a focus on the winter calendar of events in order to minimize major events overlapping.  Many other issues have been mulled over and discussed over the past year and, finally, back in June, it felt like some progress was being made when the TTR and FIS created a joint ‘task force’ that was charged with creating a long term strategy for competitive freestyle snowboarding  The task force is made up of TTR and FIS representatives along with coaches, judges, athletes and national snowboard organizations; a well-rounded group of snowboard ‘officials’ who collectively posses a mountain of knowledge that was being made available to FIS while they were getting ready to make some large decisions about freestyle snowboarding.

 

After meetings in South Korea at the end of August 2011, FIS announced that they had made final decisions on field sizes, national quotas and the

qualification process for freestyle snowboarding for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.  Despite having the newly formed joint task force at their disposal, the FIS made these decisions behind closed doors choosing to totally ignore any recommendations from the newly formed task force which included some of the most knowledgeable people in the snowboard game.  FIS’s actions left out an excellent chance to pull from this collective knowledge, engage the snowboarding community and embrace the sport.

 

TTR is greatly dissapointed by the recent decisions made by the FIS.  However, TTR remains open to future discussions with the FIS and will continue to work towards having an impact on, not only the 2014 Olympics, but the long-term future of snowboarding.

 

Read related stories below:

http://onboard.mpora.com/news/snowboarding-set-fisted-olympic-qualification.html

http://espn.go.com/action/snowboarding/story/_/id/6913174/ioc-approves-fis-recommendation-olympic-qualification-ski-snowboard-halfpipe-slopestyle-2014-winter-games

http://silviamittermuller.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/slopestyle-la-molina-and-the-olympics/

 

“Send it! Apps” just launched the new Snow Dice app and the TTR crew got a sneak peak at this new on-snow trick tool.  The new app is a cool way for you and your crew to progress your riding and have fun while doing it.  You can set Snow Dice to ‘jump’ or ‘rail’ mode, take a roll of the dice and conquer the trick that comes up.  Have all four 3′s on lock?  Step up the difficulty on Snow Dice and get started on your 5′s together with your friends and push each other to get new tricks in the bag.

Check out this demo video for a low down on how it works and check out the official press release below for more details and just download it…

 

‘Snow Dice’ on the iPhone from Snow Dice on Vimeo.

 

What is ‘Snow Dice’? Originating from the skateboard world of ‘Skate or Dice’, the game would consist of  a physical set of several dice. Each pair of dice would have a variety of trick options written on it which, when rolled, would create a trick combination that the rider would get to attempt. This concept then extended into the snowboard world, and now with the release of the official ‘Snow Dice’ App on the App Store, any snowboarder with a iPhone or iPod Touch can play.

The ‘Snow Dice’ App is NOT a video game. It is designed for real snowboarders to use on the hill as they are actually snowboarding.

Using the ‘Snow Dice’ App is simple:
– Download the ‘Snow Dice’ App
– Launch the App when your out on the snow and ready to throw down
– Physically shake your iPhone to ‘Roll the Dice’
– Read out the trick that the ‘Snow Dice’ randomly selects
– Go and try the trick!

‘SNOW DICE’ : Shake – Roll – Go!

Can you only spin a 360? No worries! A huge advantage of the ‘Snow Dice’ App is the ability to choose your own difficulty settings. This means no trick is out of reach and you are in total control. With Jump and Rail modes, spins options of up to 1080′s and 8 different grab varieties – ‘Snow Dice’ has EVERYONE covered.

You’re sessioning a street rail – SNOW DICE! You want to bet 5 bucks against your buddy on the beginners jump – SNOW DICE! You’re lapping the park and want to try something different – SNOW DICE! The ‘Snow Dice’ App is aimed for any freestyle snowboarder who loves jibbing and jumping – full stop! Weekend warriors, broke snowboard bums, shred ninja’s, coaches, instructors, Am’s and Pro’s alike can all use the ‘Snow Dice’ App to expand their bag of tricks, challenge their buddies and have a smile on their dial.

Proceeds of the ‘Snow Dice’ App will go towards blacked out staff Range Rovers with 24 inch rims, ‘team building’ heliboarding trips in Alaska and the hiring of blonde Swedish models as ‘assistants’.

The ‘Snow Dice’ App is made by snowboarders – for snowboarders and is available NOW on the iTunes App Store for $1.99.

For more information please visit www.snowdice.net

 

The crew which started in the small Town “Isen” in Germany and has since grown to a full blown snowboard movie production crew, has released a trailer for their new and upcoming movie “Kaleidoscope”. And just as we expected… it looks awesome! Although it is mid summer in the northern Hemisphere this trailer made us wanna go snowboarding. The start of the 2011/12 TTR Tour this Friday might also have something to with this…

Enough talking, check out the trailer for yourself:

 

The film is by Alex Schiller, Tom Elliott and Vincent Urban and features the riding of – Alex Tank, Benny Wetscher, Christian Haller, Christophe Schmidt, Colin Frei, Dani Rajcsanyi, David Bertschinger Karg, Ethan Morgan, Fips Strauss, Fredrik Evensen, Kevin Bäckström, Ludwig Lejkner, Peter König, Simon Gruber, Tobi Strauss, Tom Klocker and Wojtek Pawlusiak.

 

TTR’s brand partner Volcom is known to rock it and apparently now breeds young rockstars as well… Every wonder what it’s like to spend spring break ruling the park? No recess, no homework, just straight shredding. Have a look at Volcom’s groms and how they gripped it and ripped it during their time out from school. For spring break 2011, they had Norwegian upstart, Markus Kleveland join the US crew of Cody Warble, Brock Crouch and Jack Herald.

 

TTR brand partner Nike 6.0 is shining a new light on halfpipe riding by the looks of a teaser released today. With a release date of June 2nd “The Chosen” will feature TTR World Snowboard Tour Champ Peetu Piiroinen as well as Louie Vito, Mason Aguirre, Greg Bretz and more.

Head over to the Nike 6.0 Facebook page to get updates on the project.

 

The official website of the World Snowboarding Championships is now online!! Visit www.wsc2012.com to know more about qualification criteria, news, riders bio and even more.

WSC Qualified Riders

The first wave of qualified riders for the upcoming inaugural World Snowboarding Championship in Oslo 2012 is official.
All TTR World Tour Champions from the last three years are eligible to compete in all disciplines at the WSC 2012. This includes three times champ Peetu Piiroinen (TTR World Champ 2009/10/11), Jamie Anderson (TTR World Champ 2011), Enni Rukajarvi (TTR World Champ 2010) and Kelly Clark (TTR World Champ 2009).
In addition to our World Tour Champions all six star winners from the last 53 weeks prior to Monday, January 16th, 2012 are eligible to compete in the discipline in which they won the title for.

You or your favorite rider not on the list? This is how to qualify:

• TTR World Ranking Quota Male riders ranked 50 or higher, and female riders ranked 30 or higher, on the TTR Halfpipe World Ranking or Slopestyle World Ranking will be automatically eligible to compete in the respective discipline they qualify for. The cut-off date for qualification into the 2012 event will be Monday, January 16th, 2012.

• WSF Nations Quota Each WSF member Nation is entitled to qualify one rider for both men and women in each discipline. Therefore, each nation is entitled to a maximum of 4 spots and will need to use a national event, such as a national championships event, or a national criteria approved by the WSF Event Committee, to qualify riders. All national quota spots for the 2012 event need to be announced by the National Snowboard Associations no later than Monday, January 16th, 2012. If one or several riders are already eligible to compete through one of the other qualification criteria, the open spot falls to the best national rider not yet qualified based on the defined national qualification criteria.

• Wild Cards The organizing committee of the World Snowboarding Championships is entitled to qualify two additional competitors in each discipline for men and women (eight total wild cards) which all need to be approved by TTR/WSF.

This is for all you big mountain cats… TTR’s brand partner Voelkl Snowboards have recently revealed that the eco-friendly, topsheet made of hemp, Cashew board will be available as a split board next season.. Voelkl posted some pictures along with quick facts on their Voelkl Facebook Page – head over there to find out more!

 

And since we all seem to share a passion for moving pictures – check out Voelkl TV’s latest edit: 
“Spectral part 3 – Poland” in which Keiji Okamoto, Benny Mösl and Simon Schweiger get an insight view where to find the best shred in Poland. Thanks to the guiding of Gumka aka. Agnieszka Rusin who is showing them around in her homecountry…

 

 

Burton Snowboards’ Chill foundation was founded in 1995 by Jake and Donna Burton to bring snowboarding to kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to try our unique sport. Since then the foundation has been very involved in projects that help youth in many US cities. For the upcoming Burton US Open in Stratton, Vermont the foundation has organized a special treat.

The Chill Foundation announced today that they will be flying outstanding youth participants from their 14 North American cities to Vermont to attend the US Open Snowboarding Championships at Stratton Mountain from February 10th-13th.  Participants were selected based on not only their progression in snowboarding, but also on their demonstrated commitment to Chill’s values.  This will be the 12th year that Chill has provided this unique experience for kids served by Chill’s program in North America.

Youth participants will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in snowboarding culture at one of the largest snowboarding competition in the world.  Activities will include watching the sport’s best riders compete in halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events, riding with Burton founders Jake and Donna, and a special recognition event with various Burton team riders and Stefan Lessard of Dave Mathews Band and Yukon Kornelius. Stefan and his “Secret Stash” of friends will also perform at a special benefit show with all of the proceeds going directly to the Chill Foundation.

June Heston, Executive Director for the Chill Foundation had the following to say about the event. “The U.S. Open gives these Chill participants the opportunity to see beyond their own community, and it is a way for them to really experience and believe that anything is possible.” Many of the youth Chill serves have never been out of their cities let alone to a major event such as the U.S. Open.

www.chill.org