If you did not make it to Livigno today to see Eric Willett showing a sick run including a Switch Backside 1260, Frontside Double Cork 1080 and a Backside Double Rodeo then you have the chance right here to watch him in practice. Burn, the main sponsor of the event, was lucky enough to have chosen him to try out the head cam. Enjoy! There are more videos available on the Burn Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/BurnRiverJump
More photos are also available right here:
One of TTR’s media partners, Whiteout.tv, and TTR’s partners Swatch, have put together this project that follows Christian “Hitsch” Haller to TTR events all around the globe in his Olympic season and offers the chance for viewers to get to know more. With interviews from friends, family and other top pros, you’ll get a unique look in to the life of one of Switzerland’s most interesting snowboarders and current World no. 2 on the Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour.
For more information on this young rider also visit his profile on ttrworldtour.com
Click on the link below to watch the two episodes of Hitsch:
With the begining of the new year TTR’s golden partner, TSG, launched their new website. This relaunch doesn’t only cover a redesign of the site but implements a bunch of new functions. The new website now has sophisticated filter functions, which gives user multiple possibilities to find his desired products. Starting by entering the appropriate sport world you will be guided through the collection untill finding favorite model.
One of the new features is TSG TV, which shows a collection of action videos as well as product videos, featuring team riders like Iouri Podladtchikov and Ellias Elhard
Go to http://ridetsg.com/
As organizer of basically all things rider related for the 8th Red Bull Nanshan, I had a reasonably busy week for this competition! Follow my day-to-day madness, headaches and good times at Asia’s largest snowboard competition on the Swatch Ticket to Rider World Snowboard Tour.
Day 1- Arrivals
A relaxed day for the riders, but one of the most stressful for me. Basically the whole day is spent on airport pickups. (starting at 7am and finishing at 9pm), Thanks to some recent snow and general awesomeness of air carriers, almost none of the flights arrive when scheduled, messing up my whole transport schedule. I make a few changes, and luckily have some girls helping me out which takes some of the pressure off. As the invited pros come in it’s awesome to see some familiar faces from last year, and we greet each other like old friends. I head back to the hotel with a big group of them, and while they get to check-in and rest, I meet up with big boss / event organizer Steve Zdarsky and setup for a Press Conference that evening in the hotel bar.
Fast forward a few hours past the really exciting press conference, we get to relax with one of the best dinners of the trip – all you can eat and drink teppanyaki. Just as I’m enjoying myself, I hear one of the late-arrival riders still hasn’t been seen at the airport. Uh-oh. Meanwhile, we have a few drinks, get to know each other and are reminded of that ‘school trip’ feeling from back in the day. A relaxing group foot massage follows, and mid-massage I hear the missing rider has arrived – but his boardbag hasn’t. I decide to sort it out tomorrow. Finally by 1:00am I drop a few guys off at a nearby club to continue partying, and head home for a little bit of sleep.
Day 2 – Sighteseeing
I join the guys for an awesome buffet breakfast at the Hilton. I’ve got to make sure all the guys are checked out, bags packed by 11:00am, but I’m not surprised when by 10:30am there’s still no sign from last night’s ‘clubbers’. I get their room number from reception and pay them a visit – as expected, they’re still in bed, with some uneaten room service in the doorway.. haha.
We board the bus and head straight to the Olympic’s Bird’s Nest Stadium to check out the snow-world-park-thing they have going on there. It’s actually a pretty solid effort! Snow had been blown throughout the stadium, and just outside was a ski slope made out of scaffolding. Some of the riders opted to ski with hilarious results, a few hungover riders slept on the bus and some just wandered off. I make a call to the airport’s lost baggage claim to try and track down the missing boardbag. They’re not too sure about it, but tell it’s still in San Francisco and might arrive tonight.
A few hours later, and we’re on our way to the ski resort. The hotel is expecting us and we’ve made sure they pre-heat the rooms this year, the weather is freezing! It’s pretty funny watching the first-timers see the man-made ski resort for the first time, and you can feel everyone getting more excited.
A delicious and cheap Chinese dinner with the local crew allows everyone involved in the competition to bond and familiarize themselves. We have some hassle trying to get an official receipt for the meal, and they tell us to come back tomorrow. I wish I could relax sometimes!
Day 3 – Practice day
Ah.. today I don’t have quite as much to worry about. The riders are left to themselves for a full day of practice, however every 10 mins there’s another question. “Where can we use the internet?” “Can I get my board waxed?” “What time’s lunch?” Despite all this information being in the rider’s booklet I so thoughtfully prepared and handed to them on the first day.. I send them in the right direction. There’s still no sign of the missing boardbag, so I make another call to the lost baggage department. Apparently the bag missed its flight last night (bags can be so unorganized!) but is on its way now and will be delivered to the ski resort that night. I politely emphasis how important this bag is… the rider’s been forced to practice on a borrowed board in borrowed pants, boots, and gloves
Another good local dinner is followed by more desk work. I sit down with the head judge and we develop an excel file that will streamline tomorrow’s judging process. Thankfully my girlfriend has come up to join for the weekend, so after a long day I finally get to lie down next to her! I get a phone call at 2:00am letting me know the bag has arrived and will be delivered in an hour. I try to sound enthusiastic about this.
Day 4 – Competition, Day 1
I wake up, half excited and half stressed. Today will be non-stop madness, but at the same time I’ll get to witness and help run the largest Asian snowboard contest on the Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour… which still stokes me out.
I get about two minutes to make a breakfast sandwich from the buffet selection before having to rush off. I get briefed on what the day’s plan of attack is, draft today’s press release, set up the judges booth for scoring and do a hundred other things that come up. The weather is great, there’s no wind, and eventually I get together with the judges to check out the practice runs. We’re all impressed by the level of riding and the vibe today is super good! My good friend Eric is doing a wicked job at MC’ing the event in Chinese, and the crowd is obviously hyped.
As the competition gets under way, I’m quietly proud that the judging system we made last night is working flawlessly. I’m even more stoked to see fellow Kiwis Nick Hyne and Nick Brown make it through to tomorrow’s finals – especially as it was Nick Hyne’s bag that was missing! Tobias Karlsson, however, injures himself on his second run, and as the scores are tallied up we’re left with quite the predicament. Tobias’s first run was good enough to qualify him, but with a suspected broken rib and no word back from the doctors, it seems unlikely he will compete tomorrow. We decide to bring through the 13th placed rider, which by chance is Chinese rider Wang Lei. The media and Chinese fans are ecstatic, and it’s great to have a local rider in the finals.
No time to see the announcement though, as we’re under tight deadlines! The second the qualified riders are announced, I head straight to the office to write up the press release on today’s results. I’m halfway through, and suddenly realize I can’t remember what the first placed qualified rider’s run consisted of! I hunt down the head judge, and he goes over the tricks with me. One hour and three-hundred rewrites later, and I send the draft to Steve – he gives it the OK, my colleague Jess translates it to Chinese, and we blast it out to the media – only 2 hours after the competition finished! Jess and I high-five, we’re a good team.
There’s still lots of work to do – as the riders head for dinner, we stay in the office; going through pictures, updating the judges sheets, sending out our own newsletter, drafting tomorrow’s press release, it seems to never end! However by the time the crew gets back from dinner with leftovers, we’re finished, and have a quick snack and beer before calling it a night.
TO READ THE FULL STORY CHECK BACK TO THE TTR BLOG THIS WEEKEND – THE SECOND PART UP AHEAD 
TTR welcomes a new and exciting format on the Tour. With this new addition, the race for the Tour Championship title will become even harder and nerve racking than ever before. Skiers beware – snowboarders are taking over cross country now. May we introduce you to CROSS COUNTRY SNOWBOARDING 
To keep up with the fast developing of new tricks in the halfpipe before the Olympics in February, TTR’s new brand partner for 09/10, Nike 6.0, invited some of their team riders there to join the Saas Fee Invitational Airbag Session. Among the riders were two TTR Tour Champions Peetu and Mathieu, plus some of Europe’s finest like Manuel Pietropoli. Check out the video below.
For all those that did not make it to Biarritz last Friday, visit www.methodmag.com to read and see some footage of the the first 5×5 = 25 years of Snowboard Photography exhibition initiated by our media partner Method Magazine. The exhibition contains artworks of the last 25 years of snowboarding and was visited by no other than some of TTR’s favourites like Terje Haakonsen and Dani “Kiwi” Meier. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the show heads towards more alpine and snowy areas soon.
One girls has been featured in many magazines and websites worldwide. She is only 19 years old but has already achieved so much. Of course we are talking about the current Swatch TTR World Tour leader Sarka Pancochova. Soon, she will be heading the 6Star Roxy Chicken Jam to try to defend her Tour lead against some of the best female riders out there.
She was not only featured in the November issue of Onboard Magazine (hope you didn’t miss that one!), but lately also on www.sport2.de. To read the full interview, click here.
(c) Carlos Blanchard
The first 6Star event of the season, the Billabong Air & Style in Innsbruck,turned the spotlight on Slovenian rider Marko Grilc, who has been constantly successful on the Swatch TTR Tou but never had the big breakthrough at 6Star contest. To watch him talking about his win, check out TTR’s latest video right here
If you’re from Slovenia, what are the odds that you’ll win the TTR 6-star Air&Style event one day? Hell, they are pretty low even if you are from one of the snowboarding strongholds like the US or Finland! We caught up with Marko Grilc, who has just been crowned the new Billabong Air&Style winner, after pulling off an amazing bag of tricks, including a switch back 10 late cork. Read on to learn the secrets of his success, how many text messages he received after his victory, and why Travis Rice is still crazy…
Hey Grilo, congratulations on this great success. Tell us, at what time into the contest did you realise that you might win it?
It wasn’t until the last jump that I really thought about that. Before that I had too many other things in my mind. First I was just happy that I was in the starting field. When I made the top 8 I thought ‘Wow, I will get an invitation for next year’s event!’, and even when I was in the superfinals I always focused on my next jump. So when I landed my last jump I realised ‘Cool I could win this!’ – and I did!
To read the full interview go to www.onboardsnowboarding.com
Article in one of Germany's biggest newspapers in November 2009
With the Air & Style coming up in Austria and Elias Elhardt kicking a*** on the Tour, I started thinking about the snowboard scene in those two countries mentioned. Also, if you are capable of the German language, you may have noticed that the German snowboarding scene, especially the Olympic team, has been in the spotlight in the media lately (like the article of FAZ you see above).
Why? Well….because apparently there is no German snowboarding scene???!!! Prove me wrong, but at least this seems to be the opinion of some skiing guys that sit in some pretty powerful positions and who, apparently don’t give a darn about supporting the sport and its young athletes. Or how can a country with such a great interest in the sport and so many fans of snowboarding not have a whole lot of successful riders out there at the comps. Austria is the same I guess, especially in regards to the upcoming Olympics: neither Germany nor Austria have a halfpipe hopeful in place. I mean riders like Silvia Mittermueller and David Benedek from Germany, the Aesthetiker crew, Julia Baumgartner, Lisa Filzmoser from Austria and loads more…they are rocking it but mainly in Slopestyle! And still they are underrepresented in the mainstream especially.
Again WHY????? No good possibilities to practice (halfpipe especially), are the good riders mainly going for photoshoots or are we (as in: I am German, too, as you might have guessed by now) simply not good enough??!! I hope to explore this question a lil bit more over the season so watch out for some more blogs coming out. And those of you that are not interested in this topic – go and read another blog
