TTR Burn River Jump 2011 - Big Air Finals

Living up to its reputation, the 5Star Burn River Jump gathered a crowd of 2000 screaming fans to support the international line up of riders jumping over the Spoel river at the night time "Grand Finale" of the event in Livigno, Italy. Over a few days, during 22nd February 25th of February, 2011 this elite Italian snowboard competition ran two formats; slopestyle and big air. Kicking off with the Burn slopestyle contest in the Swatch Mottolino Snowpark, the spectators saw Norwegian Ulrik Badertscher take top honours. Ten of the best scoring riders from the slopestyle, received invites to compete in the night-time big air competition along with the invited riders and wildcards. Due to high winds that came in during the first qualification round the organizers made the decision to close the big air, and re-run the qualifications using only the " burn river jump" and the end jib section. As the course changed significantly the new format saw a 4Star TTR status. 16 riders battled it out for a place in the four man super final. The nail biting two-run knock out super final saw Norwegian duo Alexander Ostreng and Ulrik Badertscher, who both had made their way all the way from the qualifying rounds, go head to head, while Jamie Nicholls and Eric Willet battled each other. In the end it was Alexander and Eric who made it through to the final round. Aleksander nailed his first run that included a huge backside 900 over the river and a switch front lipslide 270 out in the jib section, knocking out Eric's top run consisting of a switch backside 900 and stylish boardslide. Ulrik took third place leaving rail extraordinaire Jamie in fourth. Jamie bagged the additional "Burn Jib Master" award for his rail trickery. With the two podium placements Ulrik Badertscher leaped up in the Swatch TTR ranking and now sits in World No. 14, while Jamie Nicholls jumped into World No. 28.