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Snowboarding News - December 2009
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Thursday, 31 December 2009Ricker, a two-time Olympian in Snowboard Cross (2006) and Halfpipe (1998, 2006) was the 2008 Snowboard Cross Crystal Globe winner as the World Cup Overall points leader and has made a strong start to the 2009-10 season with a first place finish in September at the first FIS Snowboard Cross World Cup in Argentina.
Blenz was attracted to Maëlle not only because she is a veteran and role model on the Canadian National Snowboard team and a leading force in women’s snowboarding – she’s also a Blenz customer.
“As a Canadian company, it’s great to support our community on behalf of the thousands of Blenz customers, and we’re proud to partner with Maëlle. She’s an ambitious and talented local athlete who also understands and lives our brand and is hoping to do something great for Canada in 2010,” said Brian Noble, director and co‐founder of Blenz Coffee.
Maëlle is excited about the partnership with a BC-based company that fits seamlessly into her life as a snowboard athlete. "Sipping coffee in the morning before riding powder all day until my legs feel like they're going to fall off and then winding down with a hot chocolate from Blenz is a perfect day,” said Maëlle. “I'm very happy to partner with Blenz for some extra fuel going into the Olympics this year."
Blenz is also giving its customers an opportunity to put their support behind Maëlle by releasing a Limited Edition West Coast Winter Roast this winter season and will be available until the end of February 2010. “Every time our customers buy the West Coast Winter Roast, they’ll be enjoying great coffee in support of a great Canadian athlete,” added Brian Noble.
Source: www.pr.com
Wednesday, 30 December 2009The largest Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour event on Asian soil this season, the 4Star 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open is taking place on the 9-10th January, 2010. This event not only offers a US$25,000 prize purse and up to 500 Swatch TTR ranking points, but a chance for 6 locally qualified riders to compete against the 24 invited top level international snowboarders.
With riders from 13 different nations attending the event, this season's competition will be the most diverse in the event's history. Beside Andrew Wilde, He Wei, Li Jie, Ming Ming, Li Penghuan and Jokey Tong, who qualified at the end of December, we will see familiar faces from the Swatch TTR Tour like Matti Kinnunen (FIN), Atsushi Ishikawa (JAP), David Bertschinger Karg (SUI), Marc Swoboda (AUT), Stefan Karlsson (SWE) and Werner Stock (AUT). Matti Kinnunen is one of the hottest new talents on the Tour and has already collected a win at the 3Star Nissan Stomp It in Italy this season. Werner Stock, who recently placed 6th at the 6Star Billabong Air & Style returns to China for the second season and is hoping to improve his ninth place finish of 2009.
At the age of 32, Atsushi Ishikawa is not the youngest rider in the field, but as one of the most experienced riders at Asian TTR Tour events he is one to look out for. This will be his third time at the Red Bull Nanshan Open and after a third place in 2008 and a second place in 2009, Ishikawa will be on the hunt for the top spot this year.
The Red Bull Nanshan Open has year after year proved to be a high quality 4Star event on the Swatch TTR Tour, with a perfectly shaped slopestyle course in the Quiksilver Nanshan Mellow Park at Nanshan Ski Resort. The team at Mellowparks.cn is the driving force behind the event and have constantly kept raising the bar.
The event is said to be the most exotic cultural experience for all invited riders who get to enjoy a full week's worth of 5-star hotels, foot massages, fine dining, wild parties and sightseeing. "One of my TOP events - always so stoked to get an invite and would never say no. It is just an awesome time," says Peter König (AUT) after his second year at Nanshan. "You get together with all your buddies from around the world and the snowboard industry, meet in China and have the best seven days that will be in your memories forever."
Source: www.mellowparks.cn
Tuesday, 29 December 2009It was smiles all around for Andrew Wilde, He Wei, Li Jie, Ming Ming, Li Penghuan and Jokey Tong as it was announced they had qualified for the 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open today! Over 50 riders took to the Quiksilver Nanshan Mellow Park on an unseasonably cold Saturday to battle it out for the six remaining six spots in the 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open, a 4Star Swatch Ticket To Ride World Snowboard To ur competition.
While a freak Thursday night sandstorm left the snow park covered in a 1cm layer of dirt on Friday, the park crew worked furiously to clear the mess, and with a fresh coat of nice, white man-made snow the park was once again shreddable come Saturday.
After a quick morning warm-up session, the pressure was on as riders took to the park for two runs, with only their highest scoring run counted. The tension was definitely visible as riders put their all into stomping their runs when it mattered the most!
Surprisingly some of the competition favourites would miss the cut this year, including last year’s winners Zhang Wei and Xfox. However those that made it through did so deservedly. “While it was a pity that some of the bigger names didn’t qualify, it’s definitely cool to see some of the up-and-comers pushing themselves and surprising us! We’re stoked on the lineup and happy to see some fresh faces out there,” said Head Parkshaper and Judge Marco Huang.
Absent from last year’s event, comeback kid Andrew Wilde would take home top honors this year, stomping his stylish winning run on his first attempt. Starting it off on the big kicker with a huge floating backside 180 followed by a steezed-out Cab 360, he then hit the boxes with a switch combo on the up-down and a back 180 on, Cab 360 off on the butter box. Second place went to young-gun He Wei, stomping a FS540 and Cab 360 on the kicker line finished off with a solid jib-run. After finishing both runs he then wowed the crowd with a huge FS900 guaranteeing he will be one to watch come January! Li Jie snatched 3rd place with an effortless BS360 on the big kicker, and while just scrubbing his FS540 on the second he made up for it with a super steezy jib run. Ming Ming, Li Penghuan, and Jokey would grab the last three remaining spots with some solid runs through the park.
With the full 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open riders list now complete, the locally qualified riders are sure to be in the park practicing non-stop over the next two weeks, ensuring they have their tricks perfected and hopefully dialling in some new ones! We can’t wait to see what’s in store for Chinese snowboarding come January.
Source: www.mellowparks.cn
Monday, 28 December 2009Season two of "Powder & Rails" is barreling down the mountain like Sonny Bono on a Vicodin binge. The episodes began last December 15, 2009 on VBS.tv. Each of the new episodes will be lengthy mini-documentaries jammed full of every historical detail possible concerning the development of the sport we now know as snowboarding.
They are for the super geeks out there. The second season o f "Powder & Rails" will feature Tom Sims, Jamie Lynn, Shawn Farmer, Noah Salasnek, Chris Roach, Mike Ranquet, and Circe Wallace. Some repeat offenders from Season 1 (Shaun White, Damian Sanders, Jerry Dugan, Mike Hatchett, Tom Burt, Dave Seoane, and Jeff Brushie) will also be making appearances.
Episode 1 will feature the one and only Shawn Farmer. The Farmer episode features some beer, an aborted rap career, gigantic boards, and a ton of personality. Noah Salasnek will be the focus of the second episode. Noah excelled in everything: vert skating, tricks form the early 90s that you can only pull off while wearing big pants, and later he rode big mountain more stylish than anyone. Come to think of it, Noah might have been the first pro skater to become a pro snowboarder.
Our third subject will be Chris Roach. He had more style than pretty much everyone from his era put together. We learn how he and Mike Ranquet invented switch tricks and how they later managed to get kicked out of Japan and thrown off of snowboarding's World Cup tour-forever.
Number four will take place among the sidelines of the Legends of Tahoe Vintage Snowboard Event. All the older pros show up, ride their old boards, wear their old gear, and throw down old-school tricks in an old-school, hand-shoveled halfpipe. Sure, these guys have gotten older but their style never will. The last episode catches up with Dave Seoane and his eccentric living conditions. Dave was a pro snowboarder before he parlayed his skills into a filmmaker career. He has made some of the greatest and most well-known snowboarding videos of all time. We talk about some stuff in his apartment, ice cream with cigarette butts in it, all the videos he was in, and the ones he made.
Source: www.vbs.tv.
Friday, 25 December 2009A UK-based design firm used SolidWorks® 3D CAD software to transform an innovative snowboard helmet design into an instant hit among Formula One racing crews looking for light, strong head protection.
Industrial design firm Curventa helped client RuRoc create the “Storm Trooper” snowboarding helmet that launched the company in 2007. Developed in SolidWorks software, the molded plasti c helmet’s edgy styling and its seamless combination of goggles, face mask, and head protection quickly won over snowboarders and the British version of GQ magazine, which named it a Product of the Year before it was even in full production. However, the helmets gained even wider acceptance when Formula One race crews started wearing them as safety gear in the pit during races.
“Crews usually wore motorcycle helmets, but a lot of the mechanics found them too hot and heavy to wear during races,” said Curventa Director Ian Murison. “In 2008, the Red Bull team contacted RuRoc and said they wanted to use the snowboarding helmets for their crews. We made some modifications and added flame retardant materials to the helmets, and they broke on the Formula One scene last season. Pretty soon, the McLaren team ordered chromed helmets for their pit crew. Now RuRoc has distributors in North American, Canada, and Europe selling to other motorsport teams.”
Curventa did the design work for RuRoc founder, Rob Gavin, when he came to the London firm with a rough physical model of a snowboarding helmet that protected faces from extreme cold while venting enough to prevent goggles from fogging over. Curventa laser scanned the helmet design then entered the data into the SolidWorks 3D design environment.
“We created the early designs in blue foam, and once approved by the client we laser scanned them into SolidWorks. From then on, we were designing and detailing on the fly within SolidWorks,” Murison said. “We did a lot of adjusting inside SolidWorks, tweaking the helmet design to adjust how it fit in the back, for example, or how it moved when the wearer turned their head. SolidWorks really held up well during that process.”
SolidWorks Freeform feature enables designers like Curventa to create, modify and manipulate complex shapes in a virtual environment, which is faster and cheaper than working with physical models. Freeform enabled Curventa to modify the helmet’s shape quickly through dozens of iterations until it was ready for production.
“Innovative design is becoming the standard in every consumer-oriented market,” said Simon Booker, European marketing manager at Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. “SolidWorks has continuously added features and functionality that enable designers to do creative design work – making a product ergonomically and aesthetically superior – on the computer screen so they can innovate freely.”
Source: www.businesswire.com
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