Stylewars was initially launched by riders for riders with the aim of changing the snowboarding event landscape in Australia. A country that not many international riders ever considered visiting to snowboard, Australia has a surprisingly good snowboard scene with a few fun resorts and a small but quality scene of riders. Through the early 90’s Australia was firmly planted on the world scene. More and more traveling Pros visited every year and the resorts supported the progression with real interest. Terje, Sebu and Iguchi came downunder in the mid 90`s and Thredbo (resort) built a gap that became well known in the Mack Dawg film of that year ‘The Meltdown Project’. That was the end of a great era for Australian snowboarding as it was the best and worst year for the scene till Stylewars launched in 2002. Best as it showed us what was possible and how good our resorts could work with the top riders and the sport’s progression and worst as no resort could back it up for years to come. A full generation of riders went by with Australia off the global snowboarding map as the events all became novelty one offs with more focus on media return and less on the sport itself. Many a snowboarder was ruined by badly designed courses and resorts inability to grasp that without the riders loyalty there was no scene and therefore events died and frequently so did riders career’s through injury. The traveling pros stopped coming to Australia and all went straight to New Zealand instead.

In 2002 Stylewars was born. With help from Red Bull and the understanding and complete commitment from Falls Creek, a small, little known Victorian resort with a great events department who had the ability to listen to riders rather than tell them what they needed, Stylewars was launched with a completely different approach to competition. All standard event formats were ignored and all scheduling forgotten about. The event was totally freestyle based on what riders wanted to do and where the best place to ride at that moment was. The event was fun for everyone involved and the media that came from it was the first ‘Superpark’ style session in Australia.

The parks have always been the focus of the event. Over the years with the huge help of Mammoth Mt Park builders Mike Gershner and Sam Poffley as well as Lake Louise builder Jeff Patterson the parks have been consistently world class. Even the year of 2005 where Australia had almost no snow by September the park was still sick. Sam Poffley and Falls Creek park builder Reuben Cameron managed to drag almost every last flake of snow off the mountain to make a competition line well worth riding. The images tell the story – there was no snow anywhere on the mountain apart from in the park and the resort closed straight after the event finished.

Unlike any other event on the tour Stylewars is as much about snowboarding lifestyle as it is about on mountain competition. With world premieres of the latest international film releases, live music almost nightly, happy hours and under light rail sessions in the village the event tries to cover all angles to keep the crew stoked with an ‘on holiday’ feel. Some riders have referred to it as the endurance marathon of the tour. 3 full days of competition in the park with 2 judged sessions per day. 1 night rail event under lights and 5 nights of parting means only the strongest can survive.

The live music for the invited riders has had big names playing in the private bar from The Presets (electro), Scribe (hip hop) and Airbourne (hard rock). The accommodation has stepped up with everyone from the event staying at The Silverski Hotel right in the middle of the on snow village.

Stylewars has finally brought the international scene back to Australia and helped to turn the short event tour into a worthy visit for the big name riders. Heavyweights like Romain Demarchi, Torstein Horgmo, Eero Ettala, Gigi Ruff, Dustin Craven, Andy Finch, JJ Thomas, DCP, Hampus Mosseson and many more have been a part of the event in the past and the line up for 2008 is full of big names again. Hopefully the small rider owned event can survive with its local small industry sponsorship and keep bringing out big name riders and pushing the levels of progression downunder.